Laughing Mad - Arizona State University

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Laughing Mad
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Laughing Mad
The Black Comic Pe r s ona
in Po st-Soul Ame ri ca
Bambi Hagg ins
Rutge r s Unive r sity Pre ss
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
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Material used Chapter 1 and 2 was originally published, in a much abbreviated form,
as “Laughing Mad: The Black Comedian’s Place in Post–Civil Rights Era American
Comedy,” in Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader, ed. Frank Krutnik (London, New
York: Routledge, 2003).
Excerpt from “It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop,” written by Lavonne Alford and Clayton
Gavin, published by War of Art Music (BMI)/Walk Like a Warrior Music (BMI), performed by Dead Prez. Reprinted by permission of The Royalty Network Inc.
Excerpt from “Harlem Literati” from The Big Sea by Langston Hughes. Copyright ©
1940 by Langston Hughes. Copyright renewed 1968 by Arna Bontemps and George
Houston Bass. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss and
Giroux, LLC and (for publication in United Kingdom and British Commonwealth)
Harold Ober Associated Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haggins, Bambi, 1961–
Laughing mad : the Black comic persona in post-soul America / Bambi Haggins.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–8135–3984–3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978–0–8135–3985–0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. African American comedians—Biography I. Title.
PN2286.H34 2007
792.702′8092396073—dc22
[B]
2006015371
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Copyright © 2007 by Bambi Haggins
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written
permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer
Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8099.The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as
defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
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For my mother, Pearl Haggins
In loving memory of my father, John R. Haggins
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Conte nt s
1
2
3
Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction: Enter Laughing
1
From Negro to Black: Coming of Comic Age
in the Civil Rights Era
14
Murphy and Rock: From the “Black Guy”
to the “Rock Star”
69
Post-Soul Comedy Goes to the Movies: Cinematic
Adjustments and [Pop] Cultural Currency
99
4
Crossover Diva: Whoopi Goldberg and Persona Politics
132
5
Dave Chappelle: Provocateur in the Promised Land
178
Epilogue: Laughing Sad, Laughing Mad
237
Notes
Index
245
269
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Ac k nowle dgme nts
It takes a village to finish a book, and Laughing Mad could not have been
completed without the generosity and support of colleagues, friends, and family. I would like to thank the University of Michigan’s Department of Screen
Arts and Cultures, Gaylyn Studlar, and the Rackham Summer Fellowship program for fiscally facilitating my westward trek to do archival research.The staffs
of the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Museum of Television and
Radio in Los Angeles allowed me to see hours of footage capturing the performances of comics discussed in this volume. I am beholden to Kristen
Whissel, David Rider, Liz Weston, Ellen Scott, and Amy Kett, my earliest readers
(listeners) for this project; and to Philip Hallman for his multifaceted personal
and professional support (and for making sure that the Donald Hall Collection
remained well stocked with black comedy). Many thanks to the Ugly Mug in
Ypsilanti for providing a little writing haven (that reminds me of home) and my
Black Comedy class at the University of Michigan in the winter of 2005 for
keeping me honest and open to myriad interpretations of black comedy—at the
lectern and in this volume. The “phraseology” and audio aid of Aaron Dresner
and Jeff Navarre, respectively, and the sustenance (physical and emotional) provided by Reina Leber and Michael Thomas Griffin were greatly appreciated.
Thanks to Scott Olin and Anna Jonsson for attending to the detail work that I
could not have managed on my own and to Connie Ejarque and Sue Kirby for
providing far more than administrative aid.The advice, guidance, and support of
Daniel Bernardi, Robin Means Coleman, Susan Douglas, Herman Gray, and
Catherine Squires (my scholarly sister since the summer of 2005) were invaluable at pivotal times in the drafting of the manuscript.The eleventh-hour labor
and support of my de facto research assistants—Megan Biddinger, Takeshia
Brooks, and Stephanie Wooten—and the tireless, ongoing efforts of Emily
Chivers Yochim and Sarah B. Crymble were more vital than I can possibly
express. As always, I am indebted to Teshome Gabriel and John Caldwell: there
would be no Laughing Mad (nor scholarly career) had you not acted as my advisers, advocates, and most cherished mentors. Special thanks to the Joseph and
Bolinda Kahr Scholarship Fund, which has undoubtedly saved this academic
more times than I care to mention, and Kevin Hayes, my hip-hop sensei, who
gave guidance and cred to a scholar who came late to the rap game. My deepest
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Acknowledgments
gratitude to Beretta Smith-Shomade, Jennifer Skulte Ouaiss,Whitney Haggins,
Val Frederick, Bo Kahr, Kat Albrandt, Kristen Haggins, and Alena Wilson, my
sisters/editors/audience/cheerleaders/confidantes. Finally, I thank my mother,
Pearl, for the strength and fortitude to face and surmount obstacles, in work and
in life, and my late father, John, for the belief that each of us, in our own way,
can make a difference—and for his mild smile that assured me that there was
always some goodness to be found in laughter.
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Introduction
Ente r L au gh i ng
“My jaw was tight.” I can’t remember the first time I heard
this phrase but I’m sure that it was my father who spoke it—whether in
response to a slight on the job, an injustice in the world, or a blatantly bad call
made by some person in a position of authority.When recounting the incident,
which in a different man might have elicited either a stream of obscenities or
other exclamations of anger and frustration, my father would say with a mild
smile, “I wasn’t angry, but my jaw was tight.” Decades later, when I heard
Richard Pryor say, in a sketch on his short-lived television series, that his jaw
was tight—expressing his resentment that the then Los Angeles Rams had
released their first and only black quarterback, James Harris—I was struck by
the resonance of those words. Arguably, there have not been two more different
black men on the planet than Richard Pryor and my father—one a comedy
icon who profanely and profoundly gave voice to the black experience and
lived life with operatic bravado, the other a strong, gentle working man, who
was raised in the segregated South, served in World War II, a former sailor,
whose idea of “hard” language was “hey, fella,” and who, along with his wife of
forty-nine years, struggled to make sure that his six daughters attained a larger
piece of the American Dream. Yet the phrase ties them together—and me to
both of them.What does it mean when “your jaw is tight”—the physical reality
of teeth clenched, unable or unwilling to speak, biding your time, holding your
tongue, not saying the things that you yearn to say. And what do you mean
when you say, “My jaw was tight,” and how does one respond to the African
American legacy of enforced silences: with covert conversations, with sly stories
embedded in trickster tales, with kitchen-table witticisms and wisdom. The
antithesis of one’s jaw being tight has been performed in monologues on the
Chitlin’ Circuit, on comedy club main stages, and on myriad screens, large and
small: mouths open, laughing mad is a liberatory act.
Rooted in a history where commentary and critique had to be coded for
the folks (to borrow Zora Neale Hurston’s oft-repeated moniker for African
American communities), black comedy is tied inextricably to the African
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American condition. As the annunciation of laughing mad, black comedy also
supplied laughter for (white) mainstream audiences when constructed through
the narrowing and diminishing lens of minstrel tropes. Nonetheless, the function of humor and the therapeutic value of the accompanying laughter, inside
safe, communal black spaces—whether Granny’s front porch or center stage at
the Apollo—spoke to specific black experiences. As Langston Hughes notes in
the autobiographical prose of The Big Sea, the laughter was, more often than
not, the weapon used to fight the pain. Providing emotional paraphrasing of
lyrical blues sung by “an old beggar with a guitar,” Hughes writes:
You don’t know,
You don’t know my mind—
When You see me laughin’
I’m laughin’ to keep from cryin’1
Black comedy, in its literal and literary construction, has always overtly and
covertly explored the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of African American
communities. Yet, as Wil Haygood aptly notes, crossover complicates by the
manner in which black humor has been produced and consumed: “The Negro
comic’s trajectory has gone from minstrel shows and outdoor tents, from
honky-tonks to Greenwich Village saloons, from amphitheaters to the big
screen. Laughter washing over them like brittle sunshine. Sometimes the laughter is of a confused sort, owing to misinterpretation, the joke merged with history and the ears of whites placed at awkward angles.”2
This book’s aim is to examine the circulation of the black comedic social
discourse by focusing on black comic personae that have become firmly
ensconced in contemporary mainstream American popular consciousness. By
offering detailed analyses of different personae (in their movement across mediums) and the varying ideological and pedagogical imperatives in their comedic
discourse, Laughing Mad explores the place of African Americans in mainstream
American comedy and popular culture and how, by performing myriad notions
of blackness, they do or do not speak of and to multiple black experiences. In
addition, by interrogating the nature of the laughter fostered by these comic
personae, I hope to explore why “crossover” still plays a role in both interracial
and intraracial discussions of race within the problematic genre of comedy.
In the years prior to the civil rights movement, the black comic persona
occupied clearly delineated spaces for black and white audiences. Crossing over,
while possible for a few, required strict adherence to codes of conduct that did
not transparently challenge the race relations of the day. The path from
America’s first black crossover star, Bert Williams, who, in burnt cork, on the
vaudeville and theater stages of the late-nineteenth century and early twentieth,
managed to humanize the dim “darky” and dig deeply into the actual pathos of
the minstrel trope as fodder for his humor while never threatening his mainstream audience, to the cinematic frightened physicality of Mantan Moreland’s
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“cooning” and televisual iterations of the misspeaking “Sambo”-like dandy of
Tim Moore’s Kingfish on Amos ’n’ Andy is long and circuitous. Yet the conception and reception of black comedy on this trek, which varied widely,
depending on the audience, illustrates how black comic personae, like the
African American condition, were diffused and often distorted in mainstream
popular consciousness.
The civil rights movement not only transformed multiple black ideologies—social and political practices, as well as black thought—but it also changed
the nature of black comedy. By 1963, the centennial of the Emancipation
Proclamation, the African American condition could not be ignored as the
battles for civil rights were waged on multiple fronts—and this part of the revolution was televised.The media coverage of the civil rights struggle forced the
recognition of racial inequality into American popular consciousness and acted
as a catalyst for growing the movement. Moreover, as television news programming brought the images of Birmingham (peaceful protestors being beaten,
sprayed by high-pressure fire hoses, and attacked by dogs at the order of Police
Commissioner Bull Connor), as well as Washington, D.C. (the historic march
that culminated with Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech), into living
rooms across the country and across the world, race was placed squarely on the
discursive table in a highly visible way.
Dick Gregory was there—in Birmingham and in Washington. In 1960 the
clean-cut comic, dressed in the conservative manner that replicated the civil
rights protestors of the era (a dark suit and tie), had broken the color line when
he brought sociopolitically charged black humor to the comedy club mainstream. By 1963 Gregory, whose comedy confronted racial inequality, was using
his celebrity to bring attention to the struggle: Gregory was on the front line,
leading the first wave of black teens and children in the Children’s Crusade of
the Birmingham protest. On May 20, 1963, after being released from jail, the
comic addressed the nonviolent protestors congregated at St. John’s Baptist
Church:“One of [the] greatest problems the Negro has in America today is that
we have never been able to control our image. The man downtown has always
controlled our image. He has always told us how we’re supposed to act. He has
always told us a nigger know his place—and he don’t mean this, because if we
knew our place he wouldn’t have to put all those signs up.”3 One of many truisms spoken that day to a congregation of the civil rights faithful, this humorous statement was also emblematic of the content of Gregory’s comedy. Strong,
declarative statements elicited knowing laughter from this audience as it did
from those who watched Gregory onstage at The Hungry I in San Francisco or
The Playboy Club in Chicago—as well as those who were introduced to the
comic via the electronic hearth. As part of the “New Comic” movement, in
which Lenny Bruce challenged social and cultural mores and Mort Sahl
contested intellectual and political complacency, Gregory challenged everything—and, in so doing, changed the nature of the laughter in black comedy.
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No longer was the laughter solely to keep from crying; the civil rights
moment marked the beginning of black humor’s potential power as an unabashed tool for social change, for the unfiltered venting of cultural and political
anger, and for the annunciation of blackness. The humor, as conceived and
received within the community, spoke to a deep cultural impulse, extending
beyond articulating suffering in muted tones to howling about oppression and
subjugation, as well as the victories in survival and amidst strife. Comics and
audiences were laughing mad.
Over the past forty-five years the black comedian and African American
comedy have become progressively more central to mainstream popular culture.
Just as other forms of black cultural production, such as music—from blues to
jazz to soul to funk to hip-hop—that have been sampled (literally and figuratively) and embraced by those on the cutting edge of hipness (or those endeavoring to position themselves there), the black comic emerged as a player in
post–civil rights era American comedy.Then as now, the black comic’s access to
the mainstream pool is restricted by both industrial and taste-cultural imperatives that reflect the sociohistorical moment.Whereas Bill Cosby and Pryor are
icons in American comedy, Eddie Murphy,Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, and
Dave Chappelle represent new breeds of black comedy for the latter half of the
twentieth century and the beginning of the new millennium—the black
comedic A-list actor with crossover appeal. Although the term crossover carries
with it the problematic baggage of liberal-pluralist notions of inclusion and
industrial imperatives of market share and box office, one cannot ignore the fact
that the number of black comics who consistently engage audiences across lines
of race, class, culture, and region are relatively few. The process of crossover—
and the extension of both humor and influence beyond black communal
spaces—adds a problematic twist to the already Byzantine task faced by the
African American comic: to be funny, accessible, and topical while retaining his
or her authentic black voice.
In Laughing Mad I offer a cultural theory–informed analysis of a small swath
of this rich comedic history of black comic personae as products of the “postsoul era.” The term post soul, coined by cultural critic Nelson George, refers to
the period after the black power movements. George’s assessment of the postsoul babies’ experience positions them in a time of extreme changes after an era
of great change:
They came of age in the aftermath of an era when many of the obvious
barriers to the American Dream had fallen. Black people now voted wherever and whenever they wanted and attended integrated schools. They . . .
hurried toward a future with a different set of assumptions from any minority kids in American history. . . .
. . .As they grew up, both the black middle class and the black lower class
expanded; they grew up with Wall Street greed, neo-con ideology, Atari
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Gameboys, crack, AIDS, Afrocentricity, and Malcolm X as movie hero,
political icon, and marketing vehicle.4
While George names the group from whom both the buppie and B-Boy
emerged, Mark Anthony Neal narrows the chronological framework for those
he terms “children of soul,” born between the march on Washington in 1963
and the Supreme Court decision in The Regents of the University of California v.
Bakke case (although I would extend the framework back in time to include the
late boomers—those born after the beginning of the sit-in movement in
Greensboro and the election of JFK in 1960).5 Regardless of the term (or which
exact time line, for that matter) one prefers, one can discern what forces
impacted the processes of identity formation for those whose coming of age
coincided with the burgeoning post-soul era. As Neal states, these were the
black folks “who came to maturity in the age of Reaganomics and experienced
the change from urban industrialism to deindustrialism, from segregation to
desegregation, from essential notions of blackness to meta-narratives on blackness, without any nostalgic allegiance to the past . . . but firmly in grasp of the
existential concerns of this brave new world.”6
Understanding the sociohistorical positioning of this group is vital to this
study because the most significant voices in contemporary black comedy are—
either chronologically or spiritually—post-soul babies whose comic personae
are inflected by complex tastes and cultural practices that emerged in the
post–civil rights era, as well as by race, class, gender, and region.Those practices
are experiential, based on individual and communal experiences of the African
American condition, but they are also mediated: post-soul babies are media
babies.The comic persona of the post-soul baby may, albeit rarely, reflect a view
of black cultural productions and sociopolitical discourses through rose-colored
glasses; but more often than not it is with jaundiced eyes—and this kind of
hopeful cynicism (or cynical hopefulness) permeates contemporary black
comedy and the construction of the black comic persona.
The comic persona is the performance of the intersection of multiple ideologies and lived experiences. My choice to focus on the persona, which is constructed by acculturation, individual choice, and industrial imperatives—rather
than the person—allows for the close examination of the inherent tenuousness
of the black comic’s place in contemporary American comedy. By probing the
disparities between the stand-up comedian’s comic persona and the one constructed for cinematic and televisual consumption, I investigate the tensions
between contemporary representations of blackness and the dichotomies embedded in the term crossover (whether achieved by homogenization or as a result of
shifts in taste cultures). Given that Laughing Mad is not intended to be a “star”
study, the autobiographical details that often inflect the content of the comic’s
act will be included only when necessary to understand how this background is
utilized in the construction of the comic persona.This book teases out the ways
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that the black comic persona provides the lens through which sociocultural and
sociohistorical shifts in notions of race might be observed—both within the
African American community and within mainstream popular culture.
One might be tempted to assert that the edges of the African American
comic’s rant are trimmed to fit into the construct of a movie star’s shtick, with
the comedic social commentary—along with the critical bite—left on the cutting room floor. While there are instances when this is undoubtedly true, this
volume will illustrate that the trade-offs are far less transparent when complex
processes of aesthetic, ideological, and industrial compromise cloud notions of
complicity and culpability. Historically, the black comic has retained the ability
to get the audience laughing while slipping in sociocultural truths.The boundless promise of the African American comedic actor in social screen comedy,
however, remains for the most part unfulfilled as the performance of blackness
continues to be made more culturally digestible for mass consumption.
One could argue that the stand-up material of a majority of the aforementioned A-list black comics has placed them on the critical cutting edge of black
comedy—as comedic cultural critics with unique insights on the African
American (and American) condition. “The comic-as-cultural-critic-and-socialcommentator does not merely celebrate or valorize the culture from which he
or she emerges. Such comics enable us to understand our culture as they honestly explore it and thus help explain black culture’s internal contradictions,
stress its positive features and acknowledge its detrimental characteristics.”7
Michael Eric Dyson eloquently presents the ideal comedic cultural critic as one
not only clear on his or her ideology and pedagogy but also unflinching and
unmerciful in his or her comedic critique. This description is reminiscent of
Mikhail Bakhtin’s definition of the role of the rogue, the fool, and the clown in
the novel. These figures have, says Bakhtin,
a privilege—the right to be “other” in this world, the right not to make
common causes with any single one of the existing categories that life
makes available; . . . they see the underside and the falseness of every situation. . . .Their laughter bears the stamp of the public square where the folk
gather. They re-establish the public nature of the human figure: the entire
being of characters such as these is, after all, utterly on the surface; everything is brought out on to the square. . . .This creates that distinctive means
for externalizing a human being, via parodic laughter.8
Given that the stand-up comic’s persona might arguably be a conflation of the
three (the rogue, the clown, and the fool), Bakhtin’s assertion that the clown is
constructed in opposition to “everything that is conventional and false” (162)
seems to capture the essential directive of the comic as cultural critic. According to Bakhtin the laughter elicited by the comic is “of the public square”—
understood and defined collectively by and directed to the very community,
which the comic (necessarily) lampoons. Consequently, this definition, which
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extols the comic’s conflation of the insider’s knowledge of the community and
the outsider’s objective view, is part of what empowers the comedic cultural
critic to expose the “internal contradictions” within myriad aspects of black life
for “us” (African Americans), while still speaking to the multiple forms of
hegemony one experiences while living as a black person in America. In order
for the comedic discourse produced by the black comic to be effectively edifying, it must be self-aware and self-reflexive—able to illicit thought along with
the laughter. Given industrial limitations, as well as the “ideas” regarding audience expectations of the comic persona as filtered through primetime network
(or netlet) television or mainstream Hollywood film comedy, it appears that
following this pedagogical directive becomes progressively more problematic as
the comic moves from one medium to the next.
Interestingly, discussion of the African American comic is frequently segregated into discourses around a specific medium—television comedy, film comedy, and stand-up comedy—or a specific genre or subgenre—the interracial
buddy film, the ghetto sitcom, or the “black block” sitcoms on Fox, the WB, or
UPN. In terms of television history, J. Fred MacDonald’s Blacks and White TV
and Donald Bogle’s Primetime Blues provide definitive surveys of televisual representations of blackness. While each author grapples with the roles played by
depictions of blackness in television and their impact on and reflection of
popular culture, the African American comedian is discussed in relationship to
specific televisual texts (Jimmie Walker on Good Times, Bill Cosby on The Cosby
Show, Martin Lawrence on Martin). MacDonald addresses the connections
between the medium’s practices, its representations, and their impact on the
televisual spectator, acknowledging that because of the limited number of
African Americans on prime time, “each performance by an African-American
is regarded as a chance to make a statement about realities, [and] each appearance takes on additional weight.”9 Bogle traces the repetition of black stereotypes from the moment of television to the present and underscores the
significance of the black “star” to African American audiences: “Black viewers
might reject the nonsense of the scripts on some episodes of Sanford and Son or
The Jeffersons or Martin. . . . But they never really rejected a Redd Foxx or a
Sherman Hemsley or Martin Lawrence.”10
In Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power, Christine
Acham skillfully melds historical and textual analysis of significant blackoriented television programs, including Tom Brown’s Journal, Soul Train, The Flip
Wilson Show, Sanford and Son, and The Richard Pryor Show. Acham brings to light
the “social, political and industrial factors brought about in [the] shift from
invisibility to hyperblackness in the late 1960s and 1970s.”11 By supplying
detailed biographical and performance background on black comics such as Flip
Wilson, Redd Foxx, and Richard Pryor, Acham situates programs within a rich
sociopolitical and sociohistorical context of televised black experience in the
post–civil rights era.
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In Watching Race Herman Gray explores the manner in which “blackness”
is “played out” in contemporary televisual narratives and endeavors to reveal
how these narratives “push [African Americans] towards an imaginary center.”12
Gray asserts that the discourse of race is informed by “the key cultural and
symbolic figure in American politics in the 1980s, the ‘sign of blackness’ [which]
circulated in a conservative-dominated discursive field, where it continually
served to galvanize, articulate, and mobilize the central issues facing frightened,
angry, and resentful white Americans. From the Willie Horton political ads and
nightly news representations of black criminality, which stirred and fed white
fears, to The Cosby Show, which quieted them,” Gray traces the industrial shifts
that seem to run counter to the ideological imperatives of Reaganism.13 Gray
asserts that television programs like Julia and I-Spy can be seen within the context of “assimilationist discourse,” with an ethos of invisibility (where specific
social-political issues and racism are constructed as “individual problems”),
while series like The Jeffersons and The Cosby Show fall into the category of
“Separate but Equal” (pluralist) discourse, where black characters live and work
in hermetically sealed social milieus that are approximately equivalent to their
white counterparts. In the shows of the pluralist discourse cultural difference is
explored without ever coming into direct conflict with “mainstream” America
by “critiquing the hegemonic character of (middle-class constructions of)
whiteness or, for that matter, the totalizing constructions of blackness.”14 The
final category of discourse, “Multicultural/Diversity,” is exemplified by the
short-lived series Frank’s Place, A Different World, and In Living Color, which “seldom, if ever, adjusted its representation of African American cultural experiences to the gaze of an idealized white middle class audience.”15 These
discursive categories (assimilationist, pluralist, and multicultural) correspond to
iterations of comic personae whose humor is purposefully designed to serve
much the same function as the aforementioned comedies (from Julia to Frank’s
Place): to speak for and to very specific audiences.
Like Watching Race, Beretta Smith-Shomade’s Shaded Lives examines televisual representations of blackness from the eighties to the present; however,
Smith-Shomade’s interrogation of the representations of African American
women across genres (situation comedy, talk show, music videos, new programming) reveals inherent disparities between the essentialized constructions of
black womanhood as televisually realized and the lived experiences of black
women. Smith-Shomade’s examination of the construction of black women in
the situation comedy is particularly instructive in its systematic analysis of these
representations as inflected by class and sexuality, as well as race. Smith-Shomade
speaks directly to the narrative marginalization of black women’s voices in comedy, which most certainly extends beyond the fictions of the small screen.
Astutely observing that sitcoms of the nineties often “excavated stereotypes of
White women and superimposed them on Black ones,” Smith-Shomade also
notes that “the greater proportion of Black women’s representations remained
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9
in supporting, mammified, and one-dimensional capacities.”16 Shaded Lives
sheds light on the unsettling tendency for the normative elements of dominant
culture to seep into black comedy. Perhaps more significant, however, SmithShomade examines the plethora of ways that black women’s place in comedy is
limited by conflicting media images (each of which purports to capture the
essence of a singular black female subject), generic conventions, and narrative
biases that continue to inflect the stories that are told about black women and
that they, in turn, tell about themselves.
Black comedy, and by extension the black comic, often receives “limited”
attention when included in film histories that discuss the genre within the larger
rubric of contemporary black film.According to Thomas Cripps’s Making Movies
Black these messages were delivered in dramas but not in film comedy. Donald
Bogle’s Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks provides a historical look at a
select group of black comedy “stars” to emblematize the relationship between
the comedian as comic force and the context of trends in black and white film
of their respective eras. While Bogle also touches on the lives and filmic careers
of Whoopi Goldberg and Eddie Murphy, his analysis of the cinematic constructions of Richard Pryor is the most expansive, rooted in both comedic and industrial shifts of the seventies and eighties. Bogle traces Pryor’s progress as comedic
actor through the “crazy nigger” incarnations of Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
(1979) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974) to the diluted version of that comic
persona in the role that brought him “co-starring” fame in Silver Streak (1976).
Bogle ends this analysis with the eighties’ cinematic iteration of a Pryor who was
disconcerting in pedestrian comedic roles like Superman III (1983), in which,
Bogle notes,“he looks like a terr’fied Willie Best wandering through the haunted
house with Bob Hope in The Ghost Breakers.”17 The use of textual analysis of
these film roles in Bogle’s de facto “star” studies and Ed Guerrero’s analysis of
Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy’s stints in the biracial buddy oeuvre of the late
seventies and eighties (with Gene Wilder as Pryor’s white counterpart, and
various Anglo actors, including Nick Nolte and Dan Ackroyd as Murphy’s)
gives rich narrative and character detail that justifiably complicates the quasiintegrationist “We Are the World” rhetoric that informs this subgenre.
Mel Watkins’s On the Real Side, which explores the roots and routes of black
comedy, most assuredly informed the post–civil rights era analysis in this study.
As the title suggests, Watkins’s exhaustive and insightful history of African
American comedy traces the multiple facets of the performance and reception
of African American humor. The subversions of minstrel narratives—the little
“victories” necessarily “hidden” in character construction, plot, and performance that went unseen by white audiences—to the bold sociopolitical critique
of Dick Gregory, whose politically informed and socially aware comedic
discourse acted as a model for Pryor, his contemporary, and Rock, his comic
progeny, Watkins celebrates the expansiveness, resilience, and ingenuity of
African American comedy.
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Unlike studies that focused predominantly on either a single medium (stage
performance, film, or television), individual televisual or cinematic texts or the
comic star, or Watkins’s work, which endeavors to span the breadth of black
comedy’s history, this volume traces the movement of individual black comic
personae across media in the latter part of the twentieth century and early
twenty-first. In order to determine how the culturally and industrially determined construct of the black comedian’s persona is in conversation with both
his or her era and the African American condition, Laughing Mad provides
detailed and nuanced readings of the acts, the televisual and cinematic roles, and
the extratextual presence of four post-soul comics, whose arrival in the promised land of crossover came early in their careers and for whom keeping it “real”
has been an ongoing struggle, with varying levels of success. Before one can
understand where these post-soul comics were (and are) going, it is necessary
to understand who had made that comic middle passage before them.
The first chapter provides the requisite background to this cultural study by
examining the comic televisual and cinematic personae of four comedians who
came of comic age during the sixties and early seventies: Dick Gregory, Bill
Cosby, Flip Wilson, and Richard Pryor. As the comic equivalent of the Talented
Tenth, their presence in comic mainstream expanded the possibilities for the
black comic’s success. Examining the paths of these comics reveals how they set
the stage for black comedy in the next four decades and how the progression
of their comedic trajectories acted as ideological and pedagogical models for the
black comedians of the post–civil rights era. The progressively controversial
nature of Gregory’s comic discourse acted as a de facto decision for him to
abandon the quest for crossover success. For Cosby and Pryor the easy move
from stand-up stage to television and film, respectively, corresponded to both
the historical moment and the “suitability” of their comic personae to the
medium into which they sought entry, whereas for both Gregory and Wilson
the movement (or lack thereof) was determined as much by individual agency
as by the cultural and/or medium specificity of their comedic styles. If there is,
indeed, a correlation between ease of entry and mainstream friendliness, it is
more circuitous than direct—particularly when one considers that Pryor’s
“crazy nigger” persona (which was extremely marketable in concert films but
entirely unpalatable to prime-time television) could be tailored to fit into the
interracial buddy offerings, whereas Cosby’s incarnation as comic for all audiences brought him the status of televisual icon but never allowed him to emerge
as the star in a successful mainstream film comedy. Nonetheless, the career trajectories of these comics, as well as the ways in which their contributions to
both black and American comedy have been valorized, vilified, or forgotten,
provide both template and cautionary tale to the post-soul generation.
Chapters 2 and 3 examine the comedic development and transformation of
Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock as emblematic of the first and second waves,
respectively, of post–civil rights era African American comedy. Just as the issue
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11
of crossover success was problematic for their civil rights era predecessors,
Murphy and Rock navigate the tumultuous waters of the entertainment mainstream with varying levels of success. The examination of the incarnations of
Murphy’s and Rock’s comic personae—as constructed in stand-up and on teleision in chapter 2 and as realized cinematically and industrially in chapter 3—
reveals the changing parameters for what it means to be crossover-friendly.
Clearly, their brands of stand-up audaciousness differ—Murphy’s “blue” bad boy
rap (sexually explicit and socially irreverent) versus Rock’s scathing comedic
critique (simultaneously radical and reactionary in sociopolitical terms). Both of
their comic personae, however, have been “reframed” and “retooled” for mainstream consumption in ways that replicate some of the transformations made by
their comic predecessors.
While the changes in Murphy’s filmic persona—from Axel Foley’s sexualized savvy in the Beverly Hills Cop oeuvre to John Doolittle’s affable and harried “every-dad-ness” in the Doctor Doolittle movies—may seem more extreme
than Rock’s comic alterations—from cultural critic to new millennial populist
hero in classical Hollywood-informed films Down to Earth and Head of State,
both sets of transformations speak to the place of the black comic actor in mainstream comedy. Although no longer de facto second bananas (as in Pryor’s roles
with Gene Wilder), neither are they exactly comic leading men or direct cinematic iterations of their stand-up personae. When one examines the cinematic
translation of Murphy’s and Rock’s comic personae for mainstream consumption, the questions about the cost of crossover in terms of comedic content and
cultural specificity are brought into relief. In keeping self-aware and selfconscious in construction, Murphy’s and Rock’s comic personae provide partially translated enunciations of blackness that speak to various audiences on
variable registers. Thus, for the first and second waves of the post–civil rights
era, the emergent black comic persona is necessarily culturally and stylistically
hybrid—borrowing, losing, keeping aspects of black experiences that can be
utilized as “accessible” material in temporally relevant, medium-specific performances of blackness.
In chapter 4 the intersecting issues of gender, crossover, and sociocultural
politics are revealed as integral to Whoopi Goldberg’s comic persona. From her
Mike Nichols–directed Broadway debut in 1984 to her revised revival of her
one-woman show in 2005, from her Oscar-winning turn as Oda Mae Brown
in Ghost (1990) to her short-lived stint as the spokesperson for Slim-Fast, the
comic actor has been consistently engaged in the practice of crossover. Furthermore, with the possible exceptions of Chitlin’ Circuit veteran and mainstream sensation Moms Mabley and Pearl Bailey, the “down-home” diva of the
stage (Broadway and nightclub), no black female comics have been able to gain
the access and success in the entertainment mainstream that Whoopi Goldberg
has attained.Yet, as a black woman in American comedy, Goldberg has had to
confront gendered notions of “how to be funny,” as well as those tied to the
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function of racial and cultural specificity in stand-up comedy, in the theater, and
on the big and small screens in the post–civil rights era. Understanding Goldberg’s emergence as a crossover diva requires that one look to the past and
future of crossover and the black female comic.Through the exploration of the
comic kinship between Bailey, Mabley, Goldberg, and diva-in-training Wanda
Sykes, one begins to discern how these crossover divas play with and against the
cultural politics of sexuality, gender, and race. Moreover, when one examines the
correlations between the constant and shifting aspects of Goldberg’s comic personae and those of her black female comic predecessors and progeny, the intersections between the extratextual construction of their personae and the impact
of the openly espoused politics of each woman on both the mediated construction of her persona and its degree of mainstream acceptance offers fascinating commentary on the position of the black female comic in the second
half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.18
Chapter 5 explores the emergence of Dave Chappelle as a new millennial
comic wunderkind. By tracing the comic lineage of the sketch/variety show
from Richard Pryor’s series in the late seventies through In Living Color’s netlet
era birth in the early nineties, one can discern how and why Chappelle’s Show
marks a point of rupture and a point of convergence for conflicting ideological
impulses. One can also begin to see how the de facto crossover appeal of the
series problematizes the series’ and the comic’s unique status as industrial and
cultural phenomena. Furthermore, the tensions between the comic’s stand-up
persona and those of his series in terms of the internal and external pressures of
widespread de facto crossover success (from the comic himself and from the
black community, as well as from his audience, black and white, and from industrial forces, respectively) also must be probed when exposing Chappelle’s status
as a comic provocateur extraordinaire. Thus, this volume concludes by raising
new questions about the presence of emergent black comic voices—across
media—that might direct future studies on African American comedy to interrogate further the significant impact of the post-soul baby throughout black and
mainstream American popular culture and consciousness. “The post-soul imagination . . . has been fueled by three distinct critical desires, namely, the reconstitution of community, particularly one that is critically engaged with the
cultural and political output of black communities; a rigorous form of self and
communal critique; and the willingness to undermine or deconstruct the most
negative symbols and stereotypes of black life via the use and distribution of
those very same symbols and stereotypes.”19
The comic personae and sensibilities of the post–civil rights era comedians
examined in Laughing Mad resonate with this rumination on the post-soul
imagination. By using the microphone as a weapon in comedic discursive combat, Murphy, Rock, Goldberg, and Chappelle have interrogated myriad social
and political maladies, including issues of race, and have spoken to multiple
articulations of blackness.Yet their comic critique of black communities, social
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practices, and media representation, whether in their acts or their televisual and
cinematic endeavors, have drawn praise and condemnation from the entertainment mainstream, as well as disparate segments of the very communities they
are purported to represent. Whether one considers Goldberg and Murphy,
whose comic emergence took place in the eighties, on the cusp of the post-soul
era; Rock, in the nineties; and Chappelle, in the new millennium, firmly
embedded in a post-soul aesthetic, their comic personae are all in contentious
conversation with the sociopolitical milieu of contemporary American society.
No doubt excavating these discursive processes and the historical, industrial, and
social factors that inflect them will provide an instructive base on which further
sociohistorical cultural study on black comedy can be constructed. Without
underestimating the significance of my theoretical goals, my most sincere wish
is that this book provides insight into how these performers make us laugh
when dealing—or not dealing—with race.
My thoughts return to the conflation of emotions and histories in the
phrase “my jaw was tight”—those words that, with poignant playfulness, serve
to concretize a response to social, political, and economic realities of oppression
. . . for my father, for Pryor, for me. Exposing the subtext—the sociohistorical
and industrial factors that inform both the material and our reception of it—
and discerning the nature of the laughter that the joke, the act, the episode, or
the film representation elicits are key to understanding whether the multiplicity of African American identities and black cultural productions are able to resonate with enough force to register not only in mainstream American comedy
but in American popular consciousness. But nagging questions remain. How are
these comic black voices being acknowledged and constructed—as comedic
discourse or as easily dismissed light entertainment without either critical or
ideological bite? And what of the laughter? Is it nervous laughter or patronizing laughter? Or are the comic players themselves, like many of us in the audience, jaws still tight, laughing mad? In the end I hope these questions will not
be rhetorical.
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Chap te r 1
From Negro to Black
Coming of Comic Ag e
in the Civil Rights Era
Bill Cosby’s Wonderfulness was the first comedy album I
ever heard. I remember the feeling of anticipation as I watched my older sister
lift the center panel of the huge walnut Philco stereo console and place the LP
on the turntable.With the static crackle, as the needle hit the vinyl, I listened to
Cosby recount, for a generation at least once removed from radio days, his experience of listening to the Lights Out presentation of “The Chicken Heart Who
Ate New York City.” Even though in this early routine the young Cosby
torched a couch and smeared Jell-O to deter the radio-generated “Chicken
Heart” monster, his material was always seen as acceptable fare for kids trapped
inside on smog-alert days or, on occasion, as after-dinner family-time entertainment. In the mid-sixties Cosby’s comedic style and persona represented
“ideal” and “idealized” aspects of American Negro life (although by 1966, in our
family in Pasadena, California, we were already “black”).This was my introduction to black stand-up comedy.
Fast-forward to 1975. I sat with a bunch of kids in the basement of a
friend’s house waiting to watch Saturday Night Live because Richard Pryor was
hosting. I had listened to That Nigger’s Crazy in the back office of my high
school’s journalism room. My folks preferred the “old, clean” Richard to the
“crazy nigger,” with whom I was enthralled, whose act was raw and real and
spoke to a black experience that had previously gone fundamentally unspoken.
Pryor’s monologue was strong—working the edgier side of the drug culture
material so popular back then—but it was the “Job Interview” scene, often
referred to as the “Word Association” sketch, with Chevy Chase that was both
hilarious and, unexpectedly, provocative. As a personnel director interviewing
Pryor for a job, Chase asks Pryor to do a word association exercise—which
degenerates from a harmless verbal test into an exchange of racial slurs:
Chase: Colored.
Pryor: Redneck.
Chase: Jungle Bunny.
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From Negro to Black
Pryor:
Chase:
Pryor:
Chase:
Pryor:
Chase:
Pryor:
Chase:
Pryor:
Chase:
Pryor:
15
Peckerwood.
Burrhead.
Cracker.
Spear-chucker.
White Trash.
Jungle Bunny!
Honky.
Spade!
Honky-honky!
Nigger!
Deeeead honky!
It seemed that we were all laughing uproariously at first, but then I noticed a
difference in our laughter. I caught one friend steal a quick guilty look at me—
to make sure I was laughing, too. Another surveyed the room and didn’t laugh
at all until she was sure that everyone else thought it was really funny.While this
could easily be written off as an example of peer-pressure-induced paranoia or
just a puzzling memory, the truth of the matter is that I was the only black person in the room.The exchange of looks seemed fairly insignificant at the time,
but the change—the difference—in the laughter stuck with me.
The names Cosby and Pryor have iconic currency in the world of American
comedy—yet there are other black comics of the civil rights era who gained
both access and success in significant pockets of the American entertainment
mainstream. For me, and I fear many other post-soul babies, the name Dick
Gregory was associated more with political activism (from marches to hunger
strikes), dietary zealotry, and conspiracy theories than his revolutionary position
as a black comic who used the microphone as a weapon. During my undergraduate research on celebrities in the civil rights movement I saw Gregory, as
a “comic/political activist,” on news programs, at rallies, and in documentaries:
being beaten and arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, marching on Washington,
and having been shot in Watts trying to quell the rage amidst the 1966 riots.
Dick Gregory was a pioneer in the politicization of American comedy. Clad
in suit and tie (a Brooks Brothers suit), Gregory replicated in his appearance the
visual construction of the legion of civil rights volunteers from SNCC and
CORE seen on the nightly news in the early sixties. The comic’s persona
exuded sophistication and provided a black cultural position that was unapologetically urban and urbane. Gregory brought socially conscious racial humor to
the main stages of the premiere comedy-club circuit and, later, the couches of
late-night television talk in a time when, as Juan Williams said,“the Civil Rights
movement forced America to confront its very unfunny history of racism.”1
Gregory’s contribution to changing the nature of American comedy, which
should have positioned him alongside Lenny Bruce as a twentieth-century
comedy pioneer, had a marginalized space in my consciousness simply because
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1. In the post–Playboy Club
press photos, mainstream America was introduced to the urban
and urbane Mr. Gregory (1961).
Photo from Photofest.
I did not realize how the content of Gregory’s comedy and the strength of his
politicized character continues to reverberate through African American
comedic discourse. Like other (personally unsubstantiated) legends from a previous era, Gregory was a figure I respected, but prior to this study my reverence
was mitigated by my lack of knowledge.
I did, however, know that Flip Wilson, like Cosby, had been a television star.
Wilson’s fame was at its pinnacle during the early adolescence of this particular
post-soul baby. For the first two seasons of his series our family, like millions of
other Americans, watched the immensely “likable”Wilson strut his comic stuff.
At the peak of the show’s popularity it came in second in the Nielsen ratings to
the social sitcom omega of Lear-Yorkin’s All in the Family. The Flip Wilson Show
“arrived just as America was slowly exploring its hipness—and its blackness. His
humor was steeped in inner city traits, yet it was non-threatening enough for
mainstream consumption.”2 The Flip Wilson Show, family fare for black and
white America with a black cultural flare, owned its Thursday night prime-time
slot—until The Waltons tapped into the nostalgia for a mythical vision of America in economic depression (which was fundamentally without folks who were
poor, disgruntled, and of color) during the second half of the series’ run.
Wilson, whom Time declared “the first Black television superstar” in 1972,
created a bevy of unmistakably black characters: from the mod yet modest selfproclaimed sex symbol Geraldine Jones to the sly, evangelical huckster Reverend Leroy of the Church of What’s Happening Now and, of course, the
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17
persona who was “everybody’s friend,” Flip. One could become enmeshed in
arguments about whether the “throwback” qualities of Wilson’s characters can
be posited as part of progressive or regressive forces in seventies black televisual
representation. Nonetheless, the fact that Wilson’s presence on network television (like that of Cosby, Pryor, and Gregory) brought Negro-ness—and then
blackness—into American living rooms is undeniable.Thus, in its very “likable”
way Wilson’s series demanded a degree of recognition for both comic diversity
and multiple iterations of black identity.
Cosby and Pryor came of comic age during the era of civil rights and black
power. Their comic personae, like those of Dick Gregory and Flip Wilson, can
be seen as setting the stage for later black performers seeking to move from
stand-up to screen; they emblematized distinct sociocultural and sociopolitical
threads in black comedy during this time. Gregory’s comic activist preceded
Cosby’s assimilationist observer, just as Wilson’s affable jokester’s foray into the
televisual mainstream coincided with the evolution of the kinder, gentler Pryor
into the “crazy nigger” cultural critic.These initial forays into the comedic “performance” of blackness would exert considerable influence on subsequent black
comedians like Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, and Dave Chappelle. Besides the impact of their carefully cultivated personae, these four performers also provided crucial lessons in the logistics of crossover through the
ease or difficulty of their transformation from comic to comedic actor—across
medium and across audience, as well as across both their externally and internally defined ideological and pedagogical imperatives.
The style and content of Gregory, Cosby,Wilson, and Pryor’s stand-up acts
(as well as the iterations of their comic personae across mediums) mark different positions on the comedic spectrum. Each comic persona represents a differing depiction of African American identity, which, in turn, is tied to changing
notions of blackness during (and after) the civil rights era. Although the careers
of this quartet may have begun on the same comedic trail as Dewey “Pigmeat”
Markham, Redd Foxx, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, and Slappy White, and although
their humor was inflected (to varying degrees) by a comic lineage that stretched
back to the original Chitlin’ Circuit with the Regal in Chicago and the Apollo
in Harlem as its twin capitols, the trajectories of all four personae and their
comedic discourse followed a course into mainstream American popular consciousness. Each in his day spent time comfortably ensconced on the comic Alist and was widely embraced for his craft—whether this privileged position
occurred only for a pivotal moment (Gregory’s breaking the color line on main
stages with socially relevant humor while utilizing his celebrity to draw attention to the picket line during the sixties) or extended through the latter half of
the twentieth century and into the twenty-first (the stereotype-shattering televisual constructions of Cosby’s evolving comic persona).
Nonetheless, Gregory, Cosby, Wilson, and Pryor exemplify multiple, albeit
interconnecting, trajectories during times when both black humor and black
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cultural production were becoming progressively more central to the style and
function of American comedy; thus, these four comics played significant roles
in the articulation and understanding of blackness in American popular culture
and society as a whole. Laughing Mad does not chronicle their story, although
one could easily dedicate a volume to precisely that endeavor. Rather, my aim
is to provide, albeit elliptically, a frame of reference requisite for mapping the
trajectories of the post-soul comics and for understanding how the evolution of
the black comic personae of the A-list in the next generation continues to be
in conversation with the comic discourse and pedagogies of those who occupied those prized, “crossed over” spaces before them.
Dick Gregory: Using the
M i croph one as a Weap on
Dick Gregory, one of the first black comics to bring the critique of race
relations into his act, stopped only briefly on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Unlike other
veteran black comics like Nipsey Russell and Slappy White (who began on the
circuit and slowly worked into the white comedy clubs), Gregory went from
playing Chicago’s Esquire Theater to The Tonight Show with Jack Paar after his
highly successful gig as a replacement for Professor Irwin Corey at the Chicago
Playboy Club in 1961. Gregory tells that he had learned from watching others
“kill” in black clubs (sometimes with integrated audiences) and “die” in whitesonly clubs. Since the earliest days of his stand-up career, he had been eyeing the
white comedy clubs—“where the bread is”—and was painfully cognizant of
what it would take to cross over, which was the key to fiscal success and mainstream exposure: “I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second.
I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man. I’ve got to act like
a star who isn’t sorry for himself—that way they can’t feel sorry for me. I’ve got
to make jokes about myself before I can make jokes about them and their society—that way they can’t hate me. Comedy is friendly relations.”3 Perhaps a
result, in part, of his short time on the Chitlin’ Circuit, his routines were a
departure from either the jokester comic patter of White or Russell or the sexually explicit banter of Redd Foxx or Moms Mabley.
Yet in his breakthrough stint at the Playboy Club he complicated his
“friendly relation” to the white audience by openly blasting the injustices and
hypocrisies of racial inequality and, as a result, became famous for his in-yourface social and political critique.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many
Southerners in the room tonight. I know the South very well. I spent
twenty years there one night. . . .
...
Last time I was down south I walked into this restaurant and this white
waitress came up to me and said: “We don’t serve colored people here.”
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19
I said,“That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried
chicken.”
About that time these three cousins come in, you know the ones I mean,
Klu, Kluck, and Klan, and they say: “Boy . . . anything you do to that
chicken, we’re gonna do to you.” So I put down my knife and fork, and I
picked up that chicken, and I kissed it.4
Gregory’s triumph on white main stages quickly yielded fiscal rewards—from
$5 per gig in 1961 to $6,500 per appearance in 1962. Lauded as one of the “new
comics” like Mort Sahl, who left behind mother-in-law jokes in favor of
humorous discourse on the American sociopolitical condition, Gregory was featured on Bell and Howell’s Close Up, which described the humor of the new
comedic cadre as “Post War humor—irreverent, biting and deliberately controversial . . . recogniz[ing] no sacred cows and few divinities.”5
Gregory’s direct engagement in racial discourse—and his very public commitment to the civil rights movement and social justice—separated him from
the rest of this “new breed” and made an indelible mark on the history of
American comedy. The calmly confrontational style of Gregory’s comedy was
designed to provoke his audiences; as Gregory himself stated during a series of
gigs at the Hungry I in San Francisco,“If I’ve said anything to upset you, maybe
it’s what I’m here for. Lenny Bruce shakes up the puritans; Mort Sahl, the conservatives; and me—almost everybody!”6
2. Dick Gregory brings star power to the civil rights struggle. Gregory (center) is arrested
at a voter registration examination in Greenwood, Mississippi (April 2, 1963). Photo from
Photofest.
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Gregory’s awareness about the power of celebrity to pull the focus of media
attention (in order to get issues to the American mainstream) and his willingness to put his body where his ideology was made him an (often unsung) asset
to the movement and separated him from his “New Comic” brethren. As he
noted on The Steve Allen Show in early 1964, “To be honest, I’m so glad to be
out of jail for a change.”7 In his act Gregory pondered, with self-reflexive precision and ease, the space and place that he (and, by extension, the American
Negro) occupied in American society. Even though one might argue that
Gregory’s persona exemplified what the comic described as “the new Negro”
in one late-night talk show set—“Ivy League suit, short haircut, Brylcreem—
2 dabs—but it’s Brylcreem”—the comic payoff of the joke series problematized
the public conception of the “good ones” by implying that there was more to
the requisite performances of idealized assimilation than met the mainstream’s
eye: “You see us everyday: Wall Street Journal under one arm, New York Times
under the other and Jet and Ebony tucked in between them.”8 Just as the mention of the additional “dab” of Brylcreem required to keep black hair smoothed
down (one more than the product’s jingle prescribed) in the era prior to the
emergence of “the natural” or “the Afro” acts as a semantic wink to the black
audience, Gregory uses the black magazines, hidden inside of periodicals associated with white intellectualism and capitalist prosperity, to slyly complicate
the notion that “assimilation = uplift” by attesting to the fact that these “New
Negroes,” to use the vernacular of our day, were still “keeping it real.” During
his frequent appearances on The Steve Allen Show, as well as on The Jack Paar Program in the early sixties, Gregory used his eight minutes of stand-up and his time
on the couch to disseminate information about the movement and the struggles
it faced. After doing a particularly well-received set (which included the aforementioned “New Negro” material), Gregory used his couch time with Allen
not to pitch a film or his next club date but to reflect on why legislation (the
Civil Rights Act) could not eradicate racial inequality (particularly when institutions remain racist)—explaining to the attentive host how on every third
Thursday of the month in Mississippi the names of registered voters were
printed on the front page of the paper, “intimidation disguised as recognition
for good citizenry.” Nor did Gregory shy away from exposing that racism was
not confined to the American South, as exemplified by a 1963 guest spot on
Paar’s series, when Gregory reflected on the state of race in his hometown of
Chicago. In a time when the focus of media and popular discourse on race centered on the violence faced by those on the southern front of the struggle,
Gregory’s comic aside in this very public forum called attention to the fact that
racism existed above the Mason-Dixon Line.With a wry, world-weary delivery,
using long drags on his ever-present cigarette as punctuation for the beats of the
joke series, the comic asserted that the frigid weather yielded a warming trend
in race relations:“Oh yeah, the morning it was like 22 below, I was standing on
the corner freezing and this guy came up to me, very cold and very angry, he
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21
said ‘Why don’t you go back to Africa where you belong and take me with
you.’”9 In discussing the comic persona of Gregory, it becomes progressively
more difficult to separate his act from his actions. Malcolm X, who, like Martin
Luther King Jr., was a personal friend of Gregory’s, expounded on the comic’s
use of the microphone and his celebrity as a tool of revolution:
Dick is a revolutionary. . . . Dick is one of the foremost freedom fighters in
this country. I say that in all sincerity. Dick has been on the battlefront and
has made great sacrifices by taking the stand that he has. . . .Whenever you
see a person, a celebrity, who is as widely known and as skilled in his profession as Dick, and at the same time has access to almost unlimited bookings which provide unlimited income, and he will jeopardize all of that in
order to jump into the frontlines of the battle, then you and I will have to
stand behind him.10
By the early seventies a shift in comic pedagogy away from the “New
Comic” ethos made Gregory unpalatable to the entertainment mainstream, in
general, and Hollywood comedy, in particular, despite an urgent media agenda
to promote blacks on television. During the same period Gregory, who had
ceased performing in spaces that were not smoke and alcohol free, expanded the
content of his comedy and the commitment of his activism to issues of social justice across the nation and across the world. This new content did not always
receive the same warm reception that his earlier discourse on southern racism
had gotten. In a 1970 appearance on the very mainstream Ed Sullivan Show, after
the musical cut-off cue, Gregory continued the final joke series in his monologue that tied together the Black Power movement and the “troubles” in
Northern Ireland. The advice that he provided for Irish Catholics of the North
reverberates with a degree of cynicism and disdain for the pervasive wisdom that
encouraged blacks to “go slow” as the civil rights era drew to a close and the ills
of economic recession that would rack urban America for decades to come was
just taking hold:“[The Irish Catholics] need to be more like black folks. Stop all
the looting and burning. Pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Go out and get
themselves jobs—work ain’t never hurt nobody. Most of all, they must learn one
thing: be patient.They’re moving too fast. Harlem wasn’t built in a day, baby. . . .
[There were] no riots this past summer because all of the black leaders were in
Ireland as technical advisers.”11 The audience response was somewhat muted, as
was Sullivan’s, who remarked simply, “Quite a performance.”
Whether or not the content of Gregory’s comedy was making him less a factor in the burgeoning world of black comedy as it moved into the mainstream,
the comic’s activities offstage progressively took him out of the entertainment
mainstream—from his literary efforts (including his autobiography, Nigger) to his
civil rights and social justice activism and stints as a 1967 Chicago mayoral candidate and the 1968 Freedom and Peace Party candidate for the presidency).12
By the late sixties Gregory was calling himself a “social commentator who uses
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humor to interpret the needs and wants of Negroes to the white community,
rather than . . . a comedian who happens to deal in topical social material.” He
spent so much time being jailed for protesting, however, that he virtually stopped
scheduling stand-up gigs:“In fairness to the nightclub owners, my loyalty was to
the movement. And so if you invested your money to advertise that Dick
Gregory was coming . . . and then there was a big battle in the South I was going
to be there. And so you had the right to say, ‘Wait a minute now’ . . . [and] my
agent, who was white . . . [would have to say]—‘Well, we can’t guarantee he will
be there.’”13 Between 1967 and 1971 Gregory also turned to hunger strikes as a
form of nonviolent protest—fasting forty days (starting on Thanksgiving) to
protest the war in Vietnam in 1967, forty-five days in solidarity with the burgeoning American Indian Movement (AIM), and eighty-one days to raise awareness about the growing drug problems in urban America in 1970. Gregory’s
comedian contemporary Dick Davy summed it up: “[There was a] big rush to
give Black comedians a push on television. . . .To keep Black people from rioting, let’s put them on television but not controversial Black faces . . . not Dick
Gregory.”14
Gregory’s practice of putting his body where his ideology was extended
beyond his presence at marches and his many hunger strikes. After he became a
vegetarian, a marathon runner, and an expert on nutrition, his dietary zealotry
became deeply rooted in his ideological convictions. His business venture with
his nutritional product, the “Bahamian Diet,” around which he built Dick
Gregory Health Enterprises, Inc., targeted the lower life expectancy of black
Americans, which he attributed to poor nutrition and the use of alcohol and
drugs.Although Gregory’s advocacy and his voice have progressively faded from
mainstream entertainment and political venues, his voice continues to be heard,
particularly in black-oriented venues: talk shows of black talk radio, whether as
frequent guest on WVON’s The Cliff Kelley Show in his native Chicago or the
weekly BlackElectorate.com program on Matsimela Mapfumo’s “Make It
Plain,” broadcast on XM (satellite) radio. Gregory returned to performing
stand-up in theatrical spaces in the late nineties (and did a 2000 date at the
Apollo Theater with Paul Mooney), but he continues to use his humor and wit
in service to political advocacy: whether from the podium at the 1995 Million
Man March, where he commented on this being a great day for the black family because “1 million black women knew where their husbands were,”15 or
from his desk, where he “created” the Committee for a Formal Apology in 2003
and, as a “representative” of that body, appealed to Virginia Republican senator
George Allen to be the resolution’s advocate on the right side of the aisle.
(“There was no committee,” the comic later explained; he simply wrote a letter
to Allen and copies of James Allen’s Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in
America were mailed to all one hundred senators.)16
In the past decade Gregory’s conspiracy-theory-informed commentaries,
often framed and inflected with humor, have received mixed responses from
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audiences inside and outside the black community. Nonetheless, his declarations
continue to resonate with the comic activist’s deep, abiding convictions about
speaking truth to power. In the wake of the 1996 “revelations” about the CIA’s
counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) role in the crack epidemic in
black urban America, Gregory, along with Congresswoman Maxine Waters of
South Central Los Angeles, called for governmental accountability—even after
the newspaper that published exposés on the “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose
Mercury News, responding to the CIA’s systematic rebuttals of the stories, withdrew its support from the conclusions drawn in the series.17 In October of 2001
Gregory expressed his wariness of the (then new) post-9/11 patriotic fervor,
urged the audience to remember that “the truth does not have to be validated
by ignorance” at the Black Spectrum Theatre Company in Queens, New York,
and joked about the ties between the Bush and Bin Laden families long before
Michael Moore had a draft for Fahrenheit 9/11.While one sees Gregory in contemporary media as an activist, a dietary guru, and conspiracy theorist, his
calmly confrontational humor continues to resonate for the post-soul comics
(who are actually aware of his work), as exemplified by the fact that his comments at the Million Worker March in October of 2004, which labeled Bush
and his administration a bunch of “thugs,” whose tactics were those that one
would expect of thugs, seemed to be televisually realized in the “Black Bush”
segment of the second season finale of Chappelle’s Show.18
3. Dick Gregory (wearing hat) remains committed to multiple struggles for human rights.
C-SPAN coverage of the Million Worker March (Oct. 17, 2004).
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Although Gregory’s is not a household name to contemporary audiences,
recognition of his significant contribution to comedy and to the African American community has come to him in the past decade, although it has not been
given (or accepted) in the most conventional ways. In 2004 the University of
Missouri, which the young Dick Gregory had not been allowed to attend
because of segregationist practices, awarded the comic/activist son of St. Louis
an honorary doctorate. Gregory described the conferral with typically sardonic
humor: “My opening line to them [that day] was ‘I never thought I’d see the
day, having been born and raised in the state of Missouri, that I’d grow up and
let some old white men with robes on put a hood around me—that’s
progress.’”19 Even a very public, impromptu tribute was paid by Chris Rock
during an evening when another comic pioneer, Richard Pryor, was being
honored; Rock, a presenter, suddenly reached into the crowd and pulled
Gregory onstage in order to celebrate this other black comic force.20 In 2000
the tribute to the comic featuring important figures from black arts, culture, and
politics, including Isaac Hayes, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Coretta Scott King, and
Sonia Sanchez, was organized by a private organization known as “The Friends
of Dick Gregory” at New York’s Kennedy Center. His civil rights era brother,
Bill Cosby, who acted as the master of ceremonies for the tribute, spoke passionately about the comic/political activist’s contribution to the craft and the
country on NPR’s Talk of the Nation broadcast during the week in October of
2000: “Dick Gregory is history, man. Lenny Bruce wasn’t on the line in the
Civil Rights march. Mort Sahl didn’t march. Mort Sahl didn’t get his head
whipped by the police. Mort Sahl didn’t give up, nor did Lenny Bruce, nor did
Bill Cosby give up salary to go down and spend two days in jail after facing
dogs. Dick Gregory is not over there with those people. Dick Gregory is standing alone.”21
Bill Co sby: Eve rybody’s All-Ame rican
Unlike Gregory, whose ideological imperatives prevented him from maintaining and furthering his acceptance in the comic mainstream (much less the
Hollywood comedy), Bill Cosby became and continues to be a comedic darling
of American television. Cosby embodied the optimism of the integrationist New
Frontier—his squeaky-clean likability and universalist comedic approach won
over audiences regardless of race, creed, or color. When Cosby came onto the
stand-up scene, he occupied a unique space as a comedian whose humor was
observational and assimilationist.At the peak of the civil rights movement Cosby
would not use race as a subject in his comedy. “I don’t think you can bring the
races together by joking about the differences between them,” he said.“I’d rather
talk about the similarities, about what’s universal in their experiences.”22
Although one clearly sees the convergences between the physical constructions of Cosby and Gregory—the clean-cut Negro in a conservative, yet stylish,
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suit with a style of delivery that reveals (but does not flaunt) the comic’s collegeeducated status—the divergence in terms of the content of the comedy
becomes immediately obvious. Whereas Gregory’s act, beginning with his
Playboy Club appearance, was always contesting mainstream conceptions of
contemporary cultural and racial politics, Cosby’s comedy was fundamentally
soothing, regardless of the audience. In one of his earliest television appearances,
on The Jack Paar Program in 1963,23 the material that Cosby chose was a decidedly contemporary (but also uncontroversial) take on the Bible, Noah, and the
Great Flood. Constructing Noah as a modern everyman, who looks incredulously at both the Lord’s choosing him (replying, with the coy smile of one fearing he is the butt of a joke, “Right . . . Am I on Candid Camera?” to the initial
visitation) and God’s subsequent requests affords Cosby the opportunity to
reveal his considerable talents as a storyteller who skillfully uses language and
pop-culture inflection to position himself with his audience (a hallmark in the
comic’s humor). Cosby, with the gestures and intonation of the flustered everyman (with which audiences will become familiar over the course of his career),
acts out Noah’s plight, ridiculed by his neighbors for his ark-building activities,
his animal wrangling, and, of course, the fact that his efforts are divinely
directed: “I told one of my friends I’d been talking to the Lord and he laughed
so hard he wet his pants. Do you know I’m the only guy in town with an ark
in his yard? People are picketing and calling the health department. Strangers
walk up to me and say ‘How’s it going, Tarzan?’” The comic’s inclusion of references to the original reality show, Candid Camera, the iconic (if not unproblematic) Tarzan, and visions of an apolitical picket line place the bit in
conversation with the early sixties social milieu (the year of the famed march
on Washington); at the same time, however, the eliding of any sort of ideological
commentary positions the comic’s as the friendliest of relations. Within the
safety of this biblically informed bit, Cosby’s comic persona simultaneously
offers a vision of the new American Negro while not pushing the audience to
acknowledge the newness of the construction. No cultural translation is
required for the audience to empathize with Noah, when, despite his frustration and hardships, he abandons his short-lived rebellion and acquiesces to his
Higher Power’s inscrutable master plan—after it begins to rain: “This isn’t a
shower is it? [sigh] Okay. All right, it’s me and you, Lord; me and you, all the
way.”
Jack Paar described Cosby as “something other young comedians sometimes neglect . . . [being] darn funny,” thus acknowledging (and helping to
inscribe) a separation between Cosby and his comic brethren (black and white).
His comedy, unlike the rapid-fire joke telling of the comics of the previous era
(whether Henny Youngman or Slappy White), is rooted in constructing commonalities of experience rather than exploring difference.24 This sense of universalist humor was furthered by a majority of Cosby’s early routines, which
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revolved around nostalgic visions of growing up in his Philadelphia neighborhood. His comic bits on his friends and family are inflected with semiautobiographical detail, but specific issues of race and/or black culture are notably
absent. Unlike Gregory or, later, Pryor, Cosby excised from his storytelling the
arduous aspects of his particular Negro condition: the darker realities of growing up in the projects in Philadelphia, the alcoholic and fundamentally absent
father, and his mother’s fiscal struggles as a de facto single mom were afforded
only a tertiary space in his comic universe and only as impressionistic asides
made sunnier for inclusion.“Tonsils,” one of the most widely known of his early
comic bits, recounts his tonsillectomy-driven quest for the bottomless bowl of
ice cream.25 Cosby gives voice to his mother, the doctor, and his fellow patients
and explains the comic details of his treatment, such as the doctor’s explanation
of his malady: “Your tonsils, which we’re going to have to take out, guard your
throat. They’re two guards who stand there with hand grenades and bazookas
and everything. And anything bad that comes into your mouth, they fight it off
[making artillery sounds]. Well, in your case, your tonsils have lost the war. In
fact, your tonsils have gone as far as to join the other side.”The promise of “all
the ice cream in the world that you can eat” wins his trust, and he joyfully submits himself to the doctor’s care. Revealing the unique ability to convey the
voice and the logic of his childhood self, he describes the glee with which he
and his roommates (on the children’s ward) awaited surgery and ice cream:“And
we sang, Ice Cream . . . we’re gonna eat ice cream. And we’ll eat it everyday . . .
in the middle of the night. . . .You know what I’m gonna do with my first bowl
of ice cream. I’m not gonna eat it or nothin’. I’m just gonna smear it all over
my body, and then I’m gonna put a cherry in my navel. I’ll be the most beautiful chocolate sundae you ever saw.”
“Tonsils,” like much of Cosby’s stand-up material, was not rooted in the
social turmoil of the era but rather in a sanitized and universalized depiction of
growing up poor in an urban setting.There is a “kid solidarity” that informs this
world: bonds form quickly (like those between Bill the younger and his ward
mate, Johnson, as they discuss postoperative ice cream consumption). On one
level this kid kinship, which Cosby will explore further in his Fat Albert material, seems to simply operate on a type of childhood logic that lacks real contentiousness. Even the theft of baby carriage wheels for go-cart construction in
“Go-Carts” and the disobedience and small-scale living room destruction in
“Chicken Heart” are presented in such a way that they cannot be seen as anything other than childhood hi-jinks.26 This also speaks to the overall amenable
tone of Cosby’s stand-up material. Designed for a mass audience, his routines—
and, in particular, the childhood material—simply did not threaten anyone.
What Elvis Mitchell described as “a trace of streetwise sensibility beneath lumbering affability” may inform both Cosby’s comic persona and his performances
(particularly in terms of the “sanitized-street” inflection of the Cosby kids’
voices in Fat Albert), but it is the “timeless” quality of the routines (never fixed
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in relation to a sociohistorical moment) that allows the humor to stand up
almost forty years later.That same quality also served to assuage late twentiethcentury fears about social change in the dominant culture and, most certainly,
in the entertainment industry.27
As Cosby moved from behind the mike to in front of the camera in the
breakthrough role of Alexander Scott in the buddy-“Bond” series, I-Spy, his
character (and, by extension, the actor’s persona) was the embodiment of the
well-dressed, well-educated, and extremely articulate “Super Negro.” Cosby’s
affable and accessibly hip comic persona reflected and refracted the mid-sixties
“Camelot” moment in style if not substance. The apolitical nature of Cosby’s
material and the cold warrior “superiority” of Scott provided an ideological
match with the liberalism of New Frontier/Great Society rhetoric.28 Yet the
significance of Cosby as comedian, comic actor, and televisual icon cannot be
underestimated.Whether during the civil rights era or in the present day, Cosby
exemplifies how the stand-up comic’s persona is a part of, yet remains apart
from, the historical moment in which it is produced. His coming of comic age
during the civil rights era is addressed, quite literally, by his presence and
(almost) never by the content of his words in either his act or his television
roles. His stand-up success translated into small-screen stardom and popular culture icon status: first as the televisual construction of the “Super Negro” in the
sixties, Alexander Scott (I-Spy, NBC, 1965–68), and then as the Saturday morning television translator of a pastoralized view of black urban life in the seventies (Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, CBS, 1972–79). Despite his status as a
televisual icon, Cosby’s television outings have not all been unmitigated successes. Unlike I-Spy, Fat Albert, and, of course, The Cosby Show, the comic’s foray
into television variety, The New Bill Cosby Show (CBS, 1972), after the cancellation of his first sitcom, and the child-oriented version, Cos (ABC, 1976), were
short-lived. The seventies was an era of an edgier Cosby, when the bearded,
mustached Afro-ed comic was making appearances on PBS children’s show
The Electric Company (1971–81), doing guest spots on other variety series (frequently The Flip Wilson Show), and producing more adult comedic entertainment fare like Bill Cosby on Prejudice, an independently produced project
cowritten by the comic. The filmed one-man show featured Cosby as a selfproclaimed bigot who regales the audience with a litany of racist, xenophobic,
and sexist commentaries.29
By mapping the salient features in the sitcom iterations of Cosby’s comic
personae, from Chet Kincaid (The Bill Cosby Show, NBC, 1969–73) to Dr.
Heathcliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show, NBC, 1984–92) and, finally, to Hilton
Lucas (Cosby, CBS, 1996–2000), from the civil rights to post-soul era, one can
see the trajectory of the ideological and pedagogical dimensions of his comedic
discourse. As Chet Kincaid, the hipster teacher and coach in his first sitcom, the
comic presented a single black man, in a community (coded as inner city), who
espoused the same pragmatic view of middle-class values that would become
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4. Everybody’s all-American:
Bill Cosby. The Second Bill
Cosby Special (NBC) (April 9,
1971). Photo from Photofest.
Reproduced with permission
from NBC.
the staple of the chronicle of the Huxtable clan. As the series followed Kincaid’s
maturation (as teacher and coach, from single man to young married) and the
challenges he faced engaging his students, their parents, and his colleagues, the
sitcom presented a world that was neither idyllic nor problematic—which,
when depicting an actually integrated milieu in 1969, was no small feat.
Like his hipster contemporary Mr. Dixon on Room 222, Kincaid presented
an educated black everyteacher, who was afforded a personal life (with an
attractive colleague as the love interest) and a sensibility far closer to the students (and the popular culture mainstream) than his colleagues. Unlike history
teacher Mr. Dixon, however, who dealt with pressing social issues as best one
could in the twenty-two-minute precursor of the dramedy, Chet Kincaid
rarely offered direct socially relevant, ideologically informed prescriptions.
Through Chet, the audience learned object lessons that spoke across rather
than to the times. In “The Longest Hookshot in the World” the issue of prejudice is addressed, with Coach Kincaid being accused of being prejudiced
(against short people) by his perky, white liberal colleague (played by Joyce
Bulifant)—although Chet contends that “some of [his] best friends are short
people.”The episode ends with a chastened Chet, walking off the court after a
last-second loss with two of his players: the previously underestimated short
black teen and the overestimated, tall, white one thus providing a simple
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morality tale about judging individuals by their merit, not one’s preconceptions. Like the moral of this episode, his reactions speak to and draw empathy
from a broad audience: whether his jealousy over a Ferrari-driving black doctor vying for the attentions of his fellow-teacher love interest (“He bought that
car with American sick people money”) or his rejection of a wealthy donor’s
request to include children in an activity only if they look like his old gang
(“I’m not running Central Casting, this is a community center, you help one
kid, you help them all”).
As one might argue would be the case with The Cosby Show, the significance of the series was not necessarily the content of individual narratives but
the construction of both Cosby’s sitcom persona and the televisual milieu in
which he existed. “In most episodes,” as Bogle observes, “Cosby was interested
in expressing—without simplifying—the important values, outlooks, and
norms of an emerging new Black middle class,” thus depicting “Black Americans who in many respects were no different than white Americans.”30 During
its run, The Bill Cosby Show, despite its aversion to directly addressing the
sociopolitical milieu of the late sixties and early seventies, was not viewed as an
extension of the Super Negro televisual representations of either Cosby’s first
television outing, I-Spy, or the series’ sitcom contemporary Julia. I would argue
that this construction of a black everyguy was achieved by making efforts to
call subtle attention to blackness in the series’ milieu and its politics of representation, whether in Kincaid’s commitment to the inner-city community
center where he volunteered, his eligible black bachelorhood and then happily
married status, or the insertion of moments that depicted “very real and important differences that existed in the Black community, even if it merely be an
aunt and uncle [played by Chitlin’ Circuit veterans Moms Mabley and Dewey
“Pigmeat” Markam] shooting the dozens.”31 While Cosby as Chet Kincaid
played on the already likable and accepted aspects of his comic persona, the less
than “Super” construction of the character failed to garner the widespread
acclaim of his previous television stardom or the monumental success that
would follow with his trek into stand-up, literary, and televisual ruminations on
fatherhood.
In the eighties Cosby gained television icon status as the father who knew
best in a colorized American Dream. Dr. Cliff Huxtable on The Cosby Show was
a role that very directly corresponded to his stand-up persona.32 In the aptly
titled Bill Cosby: Himself (1983), possibly the quintessential example of his standup skills, Cosby’s performance represented the fully evolved incarnation of his
comedic persona—the product of the previous two decades onstage and on the
small screen.33 The Cosby Show established Thursday evening on NBC as “Must
See TV” and, with it, established for Cosby another significant place in television history. Throughout his comic career Cosby has occupied a unique position in which his comedic articulation of blackness was viewed as both
representative and idiosyncratic. In many ways he has achieved the “friendly
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relation” of which Gregory spoke early in his career: Cosby is an African
American funny man with an unquestionably original comic voice that “transcends” issues of race—which is never an unproblematic space to occupy.34
Although, given the wealth of material written about The Cosby Show, the
inclusion of this analysis seems a bit like the scholarly equivalent of reinventing
the wheel, one would be remiss not to discuss the character that made Cosby a
television icon: Heathcliff Huxtable.“The series depiction of the Huxtable family continued the ‘movin’ on up’ trend of Blacks in sitcoms of the late seventies
and early eighties (The Jeffersons, Different Strokes, Benson). However, unlike its
predecessors, for whom ‘movin’ on up’ meant moving into a fundamentally
White world, the world of the Huxtables was primarily Black, and the series
began with the family as long-standing members of the upper middle class.”35
In many ways the series was a direct reflection of the universalist sensibility that
has informed Cosby’s stand-up from his first appearance on The Jack Paar
Program in 1963 to his 2004 stand-up tour. The picture of upper-middle-class
success, Cosby’s obstetrician-father, Cliff; lawyer-wife, Clair (Phylicia Rashad);
along with their three (then four) daughters and one son constructed a new
poster family for the American Dream, one easily embraced by the viewing
public because, as Herman Gray states, “it is a middle class family that happens
to be black.”36
The series’ premiere was one of the most successful translations of a comic’s
stand-up act into the sitcom format. Cliff and the kids, particularly Vanessa
(Tempestt Bledsoe), the middle child, labeled “the Informer” in Cosby’s standup, spoke dialogue cribbed from the Himself performances. Just as significant,
from its first episode, in 1984, The Cosby Show forwarded the traditional “family values,” the catchphrase of the era, and a civil rights era informed notion of
uplift, conveying it more as individual wisdom than as ideological agenda in
much the same way that, until recently, Cosby, both onstage and in other public venues, had espoused. Throughout the series’ run he retained tight creative
control. Cosby brought psychiatrist and cultural critic Alvin F. Poussaint, a longtime friend, onboard as a consultant because he “wanted the show to be real,
the psychological interactions of the family to be real. And he wanted the issues
to be real issues, universal to families.”37 The black bourgeois setting of the
series did not preclude dealing with social issues facing the African American
community, but it facilitated a presentation of situations common to the domestic comedy and far more closely akin to the family Stone in The Donna Reed
Show than to the family Evans in Good Times.38 Arguably the most direct narrative tip of the hat to class disparity came early in the series: in one episode
from season 3 Vanessa gets into a fight with a girl who calls her “rich”; Cliff
explains, “Your mother and I are rich, you have nothing.”39 Furthermore,
Cosby, as creative producer of the series, as well as its star, remained adamant that
sociopolitical issues (namely, race relations) need not be a part of the narrative:
“It may seem that I’m an authority because my skin color gives me a mark of
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a victim. But that’s not a true label. I won’t deal with the foolishness of racial
overtones on the show. I base an awful lot of what I’ve done simply on what
people will enjoy.”40
“And So We Commence,” the series finale, which culminated with Theo’s
graduation from NYU, aired on April 30, 1992, with news coverage of the LA
uprising acting as its lead-in. While the irony of the televisual saga of the
country’s most fully assimilated African American family (with its depiction of
African American access to the American Dream) ending at the same historical
moment when images of the explosion of racial tensions and Los Angeles burning is lost on no one, one must also question how much the “positive imagined
of the Huxtable world had to do with the actual state of race relations in the
United States.”41 Nevertheless, the televisual translation of Cosby’s comic persona transformed him into America’s Dad—a position that continues to endow
the television icon’s voice with immense cultural cachet (and attract immense
media attention).Within that function as America’s Dad, Cosby/Cliff passed on
a particular value system—the familial guidelines for access to the Dream—
within the trials and tribulations of the televisual families. In addition, great
pains are taken to make sure that the next generation learns these lessons and
lives by them: assuring that their post-soul-era offspring knew what was
expected of them and what was desired for them was a dominant theme, with
object lessons drenched in ideologies of education, uplift, personal responsibility, and pragmatism.
Since Bill Cosby: Himself and the publication of Fatherhood, Cosby’s comic
persona has been tied to the purveyance of fatherly wisdom, which is in conversation, albeit circuitously, with the notion of “getting a piece of the Dream.”
In his return to the sitcom after a four-year hiatus (and two unsuccessful nonsitcom television outings) in CBS’s Cosby, the series’ premise offered a far less
idealized notion of African American life—in mitigated struggle rather than
unmitigated success.The situation of this television comedy was in conversation
with the specific historical period of airline deregulation and the beginning of
the industry’s economic downward spiral. Inspired by the British series One Foot
in the Grave, Cosby starred as Hilton Lucas, a thirty-year employee of an
unnamed airline, who has been unceremoniously “retired” and struggles with
his place in a world where hard work and perseverance did not yield the rewards
he had envisioned (not even a gold watch and a retirement party). The pilot
episode even begins with a reference that frames the Dream as a nightmare.
Hilton tosses and turns violently in bed, waking Ruth (Phylicia Rashad, again,
stars as his television spouse), who shoves her flailing hubby off the bed.
Hilton: I had a dream I was fired.
Ruth: It’s been three weeks, Hilton. Get a good night’s sleep.
Their exchange is decidedly un-Cliff and Clair, with Hilton’s dejected curmudgeon facing off with Ruth’s exasperated pragmatist: her response to his “My
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5. The Huxtables: The Dream has been colorized. The Cosby Show
(NBC), season 3 (1986-87). Clockwise from bottom left: Keshia Knight
Pulliam (as Rudith Lillian “Rudy” Huxtable), Phylicia Rashad (as
Clair Olivia Hanks Huxtable), Sabrina Le Beauf (as Sondra Huxtable
Tibideaux), Malcolm-Jamal Warner (as Theodore Aloysius “Theo”
Huxtable), Tempestt Bledsoe (as Vanessa Huxtable), Lisa Bonet (as
Denise Huxtable Kendall), Bill Cosby (as Dr. Heathcliff “Cliff”
Huxtable). Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from
NBC.
life is over” histrionics is “You’re not dead.You were just downsized.” From the
moment that we see this new image of Cosby and Rashad in bed together (an
image tied to a plethora of televisual memories of the idealized Huxtables and
their ideal life and lifestyle), it seems clear that a different vision and version of
both Cosby’s comic persona and the Dream are at play here. Although it would
be an overstatement to cast Hilton as a sitcom Lear raging against the tempests,
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one does get the sense that, for this character, the ground beneath him is not
quite solid. Furthermore, the varying shades of bitterness in his oft-repeated
variations of his claim,“I didn’t lose my job. My job was taken from me. I know
where it is. If I were to go there, they could give it back,” is cut by Cosby’s delivery, but there is more darkness in the amiable bluster. In fact, the pilot provides
moments that recognize that the American Dream appears to hemorrhaging:
from Hilton’s postlayoff nightmares to the mistaken assumption by Ruth’s best
friend and business partner, Pauline (played in New Age-y splendor and great
aplomb by the late Madeline Kahn), that the suicide note of a former shop
patron was penned by Hilton (and includes her giving CPR to a soundly sleeping Hilton).Although these almost slapstick moments in the series, as well as his
exchanges with Griffin (played by Doug E. Doug), in which Cosby treads familiar ground as incredulous patriarch dealing with the lack of pragmatism and/or
forethought of his (in this case, “surrogate”) child, resonate with earlier and
more familiar aspects of Cosby’s televisual presence, both the series and Cosby
as Hilton are far less amenable to the world in which they live. The construction of Hilton (and the rest of the Lucas family) speaks less to a sense of realism than to a de-idealization of the comic’s America’s Dad persona and an
African American familial milieu untouched by recession. However, given that
the loss of Hilton’s job is never a fiscal issue for the family, the thwarted hopes
or unforeseen misfortune of the Dream unfulfilled is still not a part of this televisual iteration of Cosby either.42
Nonetheless, both Hilton and Cliff, like Cosby’s post-Himself comic persona, presented clear notions of individual agency and familial responsibility in
their American Dream–inflected directives to their children, which were clearly
articulated in the pilots for each series. The outcomes for the televisual fathers
and their children differ, but ultimately the message does not.The central story
line of The Cosby Show’s pilot is the parental reaction to son Theo’s abysmal
report card and Cliff ’s and Claire’s desire to change their son’s view of education’s importance. After Cliff points out the impossibility of getting into college
with D-filled report cards, Theo invokes his desire for a sort of working-class
normalcy because college is not required to be like “regular people.” Cliff provides an object lesson on the fiscal travails of “regular people” when the stack
of Monopoly money wages given to Theo disappears as Cliff subtracts the costs
of living. “Regular people,” Cliff remarks to his now penniless son. “Although
the situation is handled with pragmatic humor, the class-based expectations
built into the Huxtable world (and the fictive world of the sitcom, in general)
are clearly revealed here and differentiate this middle-class milieu from the
world of ‘regular people.’”43 Theo’s attempt to counter his father’s pragmatism
is framed as a treatise on acceptance:
Theo: You’re a doctor; Mom’s a lawyer—you’re successful. Maybe I was born to
be regular people. If you weren’t a doctor, I wouldn’t love you any less.
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I love you because you’re my dad. And so maybe instead of acting disappointed because I’m not like you, maybe you can just accept me for who I
am and love me anyway because I’m your son.
After a beat (and a smattering of audience applause), Cliff replies, “Theo, that is
the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” Although the discussion
closes with kinder, gentler reasoning (Cliff to Theo: “I just want you to do the
best you can, that’s all”),Theo’s rejection of a middle-class ethos (and its accompanying education-based work ethic) is subsumed by humorous, patriarchal
correction in which Father (Cliff) knows best and directly communicates the
values embedded in the American Dream.
When the ideological equivalent of this moment is replicated in the pilot
of Cosby, the comic payoff is diminished, given that both the father’s pragmatism and the child’s rebellion are more deeply rooted in two conflicting value
systems. Amid his struggle with being unemployed for the first time in thirty
years, Hilton is confronted by his daughter Erika’s identity crisis. One can easily
imagine that Erika received the same talk about “regular people” that Theo
received in the pilot of The Cosby Show. Unlike Theo, however, whose rejection
of a professional path was greeted with a full-court press of civil rights era ideological directives, Erika’s rejection of her legal career in order to follow her
bliss (reminiscent of Denise’s leaving Hillman to find herself in the chronicles
of the Huxtable family), while depicted humorously, plays like an affront not
just to Hilton but also to Cosby’s televisual ideological paradigm, which forwards a vision of the American Dream that promises that through hard work,
education, and steadfastness the next generation will be able to surpass the
achievements of those who came before them:
Hilton: I worked thirty years with the airlines to send you through law school
and as soon as you did that, you got a job at the airlines to work another
thirty years. There is something missing in the middle.
Erika: But I’m happy, Daddy. Isn’t that enough?
Hilton: No, I want my money back.
Despite this contentious beginning, that seemed to recognize a generational
divide, by series end Erika has married, is out of the house, and is teaching high
school, thus reinscribing the values of education, giving back to the community,
individual responsibility, and, of course, the nuclear family. As was true throughout Cosby’s career, the gender politics of his sitcom personae are characterized
by a sort of revisionist traditionalism: respectful to women (almost reverential at
times) and never involved in even light blue forms of objectification but still
viewing them, for the most part, in relationship to their roles as girlfriend, wife,
and mother—even though she might also be a doctor, a lawyer, or an educator.
While The Cosby Show, which was an unmitigated network success, was
decried by some critics for providing an idealized vision of African American
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life, which, in turn could be (and was) mobilized as evidence (a sort of racebased fairy tale/object lesson) by the Reagan Right (and the neoconservatives
to come) that anyone—regardless of race, creed, or color—could get his or her
piece of the Dream, the less than idyllic vision of Cosby, in which the ideological directives yielded mixed results for the black family, was not embraced by
the same cross-racial and cross-generational audience.44 By the premiere of
Cosby in the mid-nineties, the sociopolitical climate had changed significantly:
the bloom was off the rose with the Clinton administration, as the promised
“nationwide dialogue on race” had yielded little but rhetoric, the gap between
rich and poor (black and white) continued to widen with systematic cuts
labeled as “welfare reform,” and the neoconservatives (black and white) stood
waiting in the wings. In this climate the portrait of a black family, which should
have been struggling, living without struggle was not particularly popular with
any audience: while everybody loved “Raymond,” audiences were not crazy
about Cosby.45
In an interview in Jet magazine prior to the premiere of Cosby, the comic
repeated the question that many people were asking when he chose to return
to the world of the sitcom:“Can I make a 20 year old laugh along with 65 year
old people?”Were one to judge solely by ratings, the answer would be “no.” Had
I not seen the multigenerational, multiracial crowd at Cosby’s performance at
Detroit’s Opera House in January of 2004 (before his much-publicized commentary at Constitution Hall), I might have agreed.46 Cosby’s act sampled
pieces of his literary outings (most heavily from his recent endeavor on the
perils of having indulged in the banquets of life, I Am What I Ate . . . and I’m
Frightened!!!), but his meandering storytelling style and his frequent engagement
with the audience made the material seem both personal and personable. As
Teresa Wiltz noted in her review of his performance at Wolf Trap on the Washington leg of the tour:“[Cosby] is above all a storyteller, a man who seems more
comfortable traipsing through a past cast with a relatively rosy glow. Race is an
aside; growing up in the projects is mentioned only in passing. Instead, fodder
is found in the humor wrought from the big little moments: first kisses, puberty,
parents who aren’t afraid to say no—or administer a whack when the moment
warrants it.”47 Regaling the audience with truisms about the power dynamics
in marriage (“The longer you stay married, the farther ahead mentally [wives]
are. You cannot compete.”), both parenthood and grandparenthood (his wife
loved becoming a grandmother, because having to rear all those babies would
pay their daughters back for what they did to her), and his increasingly ageinduced health consciousness (the loss of his beloved stogies and chili-dogs),
Cosby segued from being America’s dad to being America’s grandfather.
Inasmuch as Cosby’s act offers snapshots of his worldview, it also speaks to
the ideological directives in his comedy: the privileging of the pursuit of a
middle-class, civil rights era–informed American Dream. Not only has Cosby’s
comedic discourse given instruction on the pursuit of that Dream; through his
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life, his art, and his philanthropy he has become its embodiment. Having
reviewed the content and context of his sitcoms, which televisually codified
both the comic’s persona and the ideologies embedded therein, is it all that surprising that Cosby would bemoan behaviors within the black community that
did not adhere to his de facto directives? In his now famous remarks at the
anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Cosby, speaking as black America’s
grandfather rather than America’s dad, expressed with vehemence his frustration
with generational as well as class-inflected constructions of black cultural practices. His words seemed rooted in a deep personal disappointment, as though
the inadequate efforts of the next generation (Erika and Theo’s generation), as
well as the underclass for whom the Dream has been indefinitely deferred, had
let him down.48
Wilson: The Chitlin’ Circuit Made Him Do It
Whereas Bill Cosby broke down representational boundaries on television
with comic personae clearly informed by ideological directives of the civil
rights era, Flip Wilson’s “greatest contribution was the introduction of a distinct
black voice to mainstream comedy” with an ideological agenda that was far less
transparent.49 Flip Wilson was (arguably) the “nicest” of the comic’s to emerge
in the civil rights era. Pryor maintained that “Flip was the only performer when
he comes out onstage, the audience hopes that [he] likes them.” Normally, the
word nice rings hollow, an innocuous adjective describing something or someone who is mildly pleasant, someone you don’t mind having around; however,
for Wilson “niceness” functioned as a tool in his comic arsenal and facilitated
the embrace of mainstream audiences. Given that his comic personae embodied both a departure from and a return to disparate strains of black comedy in
the sixties and mid-seventies, the “niceness” was like the heaping spoon of
brown sugar in the (decidedly) black coffee that was Wilson’s act. The comic
blended the trickster and the jokester, the easy embellishments of humor in
African American oral tradition with the broad physical humor (mugging and
movement) of the juke-joint comedian, in his tales of black folks.
As Redd Foxx wrote in his Encyclopedia of Black Humor, “[Wilson] was
known for his ability to tell a story. . . .When Flip tells a story, you almost wish
he wouldn’t end it. He doesn’t rely on monologues paced with one-liners. . . .
His phrases are emphasized with body motion, facial expressions and funny
voices. He acts out the entire story, character by character.”50 Thus, it makes
sense that Wilson, who had arguably spent more time on the Chitlin’ Circuit
than Pryor, Gregory, or Cosby, would blend the voice of a truly old-school
black humor (and a patina of minstrelsy) with a sensibility that celebrated cultural specificity in his comedy.What made Wilson unique was the lack of either
overt judgment or direct sociopolitical contextualization of the aspects of black
life he presented.Wilson’s style—mischievous rather than sly, cheerfully cheeky
but (not necessarily) irreverent, and never insolent—enabled the comic to
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bring material that had previously been reserved for the Chitlin’ Circuit and
black communal spaces onto main stages and, later, into America’s living
rooms. Long before the height of the comic’s popularity in the early seventies,
Wilson’s comic personae could be clearly delineated from his civil rights era
brethren:“[Wilson] does not have the slashing wit of a Lenny Bruce, the angry
bite of a Dick Gregory, the satirical punch of a Godfrey Cambridge or the
intellectual edge of a Bill Cosby. His approach is at once older and newer than
the others.”51
In many ways his comic persona, formed during his years in black juke
joints and the Chitlin’ Circuit, was arguably more akin to his Chitlin’ Circuit
predecessors (like Russell) than his civil rights era brethren, Gregory, Cosby, and
Pryor. Like his contemporaries he presented the clean-cut, suit-and-tie image of
the young Negro comic pioneered by Gregory. Unlike Gregory, however, for
whom race and racial inequality and the movement became a comic staple, or
Cosby and early Pryor, for whom race and the specific articulation of blackness
(then, Negro-ness) was essentially absent,Wilson’s act was inflected by a decidedly black urban hipster vernacular, and his engagement of the sociopolitical
ramifications of contemporary race relations was engaged amiably, thus distancing him from accusations of any form of social or political extremism. Nonetheless, Wilson’s comic personae were embodied in a cast of characters conveying
black experiences and anchored by the voice of an exceedingly likable emcee.
Wilson’s humor was unabashedly culturally specific: urban street humor, downhome humor, black humor.Thus one must also recognize that the construction
of Wilson’s comic persona (as well as the style of his delivery and content of his
act) has roots very literally in the humor of the minstrel show.
When Wilson was asked about his comic inspirations at the Museum of
Television and Radio’s 1993 celebration of The Flip Wilson Show, part of the
museum’s Tenth Annual Television Festival,Wilson told a story about where his
comedy came from and about his quick-witted uncle, his “hero” who was
“faster than Groucho”:
“You want to get rich,” [he said]. . . . I said, “Yes.” He said, “You meet me
here tomorrow at 5 o’clock.” My uncle had had a stroke. . . . [At] 5 o’clock
I saw him a block away—coming up the street dragging, dragging [the
comic imitates his uncle’s labored passage across the small stage]. He gave
me this little book. He said,“You want to get rich, what’s in this little book
will make you rich.” . . . And I started glancing through it. It was old slave
plantation humor—that dis, dat, dem and dos [humor]. . . . I said Wow . . .
Uncle said this would make me rich but this is terrible. But he came all that
way struggling and he said that it was in that book and he’s my hero. It must
be here so I must find it and I found my blackness.
Like many of Wilson’s more personalized stories, it mixes notions that seem
pragmatic, earnest, and, given the civil rights historical moment in which he
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came of comic age, more than a touch conflicted. It does, however, directly
make clear why and how Wilson would cull any material to find the funny—
without judgment and without hesitation. His humor was driven by the desire
to find and widen his audience, and his decisions, which one could argue were
idiosyncratic, were in actuality tied to utilitarian notions of success and a notion
of uplift that was about the results rather than the perception of the process.
Although Wilson carried this comic legacy (including his uncle’s advice)
throughout his professional career, his act conveyed that it was far less about
where he came from than where he was going.
Like Cosby’s, Wilson’s act was never mean, nor were the difficulties of his
upbringing (childhood poverty and bouncing around the foster care system in
pre–civil rights America) ever engaged as more than brief, beautified asides.
Wilson was a “clean” comic, who, again, like Cosby, avoided both profanity and
sexually explicit jokes, except for the occasional use of double entendre in bits
that, at worst, can be deemed a pale “blue.” On the whole his sexual humor fit
somewhere between the comic patter of a Chitlin’ Circuit jokester (such as the
bawdier Nipsey Russell’s couplets) and the lunchroom of a middle school. On
Flip Wilson: Live at the Village Gate, after doing a setup that deals with the surgeon general’s report on the dangers of smoking (men are more likely to get
cancer than women), the comic segues into the payoff: “90 percent of women
who have breast cancer got it from men who smoke.” The comic pauses as the
laughter slowly swells; you can see the devilish smile as he adds, “Takes a little
time, a little time.”
At least initially, the hipness factor was a large part of his comic appeal.
Wilson used a bit of his double entendre in his sort of anti-Reefer Madness,
cool jazz, quasi-Beat construction of drug culture. On Live at the Village Gate
Wilson incorporates this sensibility into the story of Private Jenkins, one of the
most amiably constructed drug users in contemporary comedy.52 When Jenkins
is assigned to work with the outfit’s chaplain, he states, “Private Jenkins reporting for duty, Chap baby.” Jenkins thus establishes his brand of hipster cred, which
is further elaborated on in the subtle signal that reefer madness is probably not
the private’s problem. After the chaplain agrees to give Jenkins a chance to
redeem himself, saying, “I’ll give you another shot at this,” the “zonked” private
perks up significantly, “Y’say shot?”Thus, although not specifically stated in the
story, it is a safe bet that Jenkins was a junkie.53 Although the material is later
excised from the television constructions of Wilson’s comic persona, through
some of his characters (including “The Mack” of the small screen, Freddy, the
playboy), the quotidian kind of cool of Wilson’s drug material, albeit through
inference, makes its way into the televisual mainstream. When Private Jenkins
advises a fellow serviceman to “be cool” (in terms of just staying where he is),
it also provides an indication of how, in his act (and, later, on his show),Wilson
naturalized the use of black slang, ushering it into the mainstream televisual
vernacular. In much the same way that Martin Lawrence would take phrases like
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“Whazzup,” “You Go Girl,” and “You So Crazy” out of the neighborhood and
into the televisual entertainment niche (and, later, mainstream), Wilson’s catchphrases, including, “What you see is what you get” and “the devil made me do
it,” would ease a certain kind of jokester black cool into the American living
room without drawing particular attention that the freshness and difference of
language and style was rooted in blackness, in race.
That is not to say that Wilson did not engage issues of race. He did so—
with a light touch and, as one might expect given his skill as a storyteller, an
indirect discursive style. On his debut album, Cowboys and Colored People,Wilson
plays with expectations about comedic social discourse by replacing the discussion of the Negro in America with that of another oppressed people. In so
doing Wilson establishes dual (and, arguably, conflicting) credibility, forwarding
and undermining the comedy’s role in sociopolitical critique: “I asked myself,
‘Should I do any racial material in my set?’ and a voice in the back of my mind
said, ‘No.’ Then another voice said, ‘One more time.’” As Wilson conveys this
internal struggle and his ultimate decision to state his opinion, the audience is
set up for a discussion that does not directly take place. “The Indians are not
ready,” the comic states flatly. His assessment of their “lack of readiness” addresses
the threat of integration and property values (a wigwam next to a $50,000
home) and deflects the accusation of an anti-Indian bias: “There are Indians I
admired, guys I looked up to, fellows who, in my opinion, didn’t let the fact they
were an Indian hold them back. Guys like Tonto.” Wilson plays it absolutely
straight and, as a result, the satirical bite of his displacement of white justifications for black exclusion, as well as the delineation of the “good ones” from the
“troublemakers,” is read as being malice free.
The same technique was utilized in his early show captured on Live at the
Village Gate, when his conversation about “riggers” in the audience becomes
both a play with words and audience expectations and a means of positioning
himself as Negro comic during the civil rights era.Wilson explains, with righteous indignation, how managers attempt to “rig” audiences when live performances are recorded, a process he cannot abide. Despite his protestations, he
believes that there are “riggers” in this audience. Given that The Village Gate in
New York’s Greenwich Village is not a primarily black venue, the wordplay takes
on a deliberately racialized tone.“That’s right—there are riggers all over. [As he
pauses, there are titters of laughter.] When I came in, two riggers followed me
in here. [Laughter begins to swell as the comic waits a quick beat.] The guy on
the door said he saw a whole carload of riggers pull up out front.” By this point
everyone in the audience has “gotten” the joke—which is further underscored
by his tally of how many of the folks working at the club are “riggers.”The joke’s
denouement takes place when Wilson focuses on one particular patron: “You
see that guy? He’s a rigger. He doesn’t look like it but he is. I could show you
a lot of ’em but I won’t [Wilson takes a long pause as if to signify the crowd
could say this last line with him] because you’ve seen one rigger, you’ve seen
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them all.” Interestingly,Wilson ends this segment of his set with a reflection on
what some might have considered a politically questionable issue: “I’m taking a
helluva a lot of liberty doing this. I might be banned from the [civil rights]
movement. They might get equality for everybody but me.” In many ways this
sentiment seems consistent with Wilson’s desire not to be viewed as affiliated
with any group or movement: “I never affiliated with any group because I’m a
group. I’m for what I represent and I try to be what I represent.”54
One might consider Wilson’s persona (as well as the characters he inhabited)
to be representational counterpoints to Super Negroes Julia Baker and Alexander
Scott and, thus, threatening the civil rights era’s pervasive images of idealized
Negro-ness of the mid-sixties.Yet Wilson’s presence as a Negro comic in high
profile mainstream venues—particularly on television—represented significant
strides for black performers. Furthermore, Wilson seemed to deliberately shun
the notion of directly confronting either the existence or the roots of racial strife
in America, as exemplified in a review of Wilson’s performance as the inaugural
comic act at New York’s Rainbow Grill during the long, hot summer of 1968.
Critic Dan Sullivan marvels at Wilson’s willingness to engage material that “the
average [read white] nightclub patron would not be expected to find amusing—
race riots, looting, police brutality,” including the characterization of his dapper
attire (slate-blue suit, matching shirt, and white tie) as “his riot outfit,” which the
comic claims to have “got[ten] in last year, out of the window.”55 While Wilson
goes on to draw a personal correlation between his consumerism and “looting
season” (“I’m waiting until August, do my shopping in the summer”), he also
quickly distances himself from the race and class anger that has acted as an impetus for these uprisings (beginning with the events in Watts in 1966 and extending beyond those after Dr. King’s assassination in 1968) by reassuring the
audience: “Just kidding, folks.The suit is from J. Press. I don’t dig riots either.”56
Just as these joke series simultaneously acknowledge the state of race relations
and refuse to comment on them, Wilson contended with criticism throughout
his career regarding the overtly apolitical nature of his humor.“My racial message
and my political point of view is my humor. My funny is my defense and my
offense. Either you like it or you don’t. . . . I’m a comic—all of my experiences
and my emotions and hard times—I have reflected in what I do.”57
By 1965, when Redd Foxx sat on the couch with Johnny Carson and
hailed Wilson as the new young comic to watch, he had already established an
extremely successful act as a headliner at the Apollo Theater and had begun to
garner the top spots in mainstream (white) comedy clubs across the country.
Actively endeavoring to expand on his “friendly relation” with mainstream
audiences, Flip Wilson and his management carefully sought to maximize his
crossover potential. As Monte Ray, Wilson’s longtime manager, stated, “We set
our sight on television but first we had to prove that Flip could play to white
audiences. So we did Playboy Clubs to test material on a white middle class
audience. It worked fine and we got a booking on The Johnny Carson Show.”58
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His set on The Tonight Show, later the same year, featured a routine that had
already appeared on his debut album and featured the character types that
would become staples for the televisual Wilson, the story of Christopher
Columbus. Like Cosby’s choice to use the Noah routine for his television
debut, which managed to have a contemporary sound with material that was
fundamentally noncontroversial, Wilson’s take on Columbus showcased the
multiple black voices in his comic arsenal without making blackness an issue.
The highlight of the routine was Columbus appealing to the Queen, “Isabelle
. . . Isabelle Johnson. That was the Queen’s name”:
Chris tells her, “If I don’t discover America, there’s not going to be a
Benjamin Franklin or a Star Spangled Banner or a home of the free and a
land of the brave. And no Ray Charles.” When the queen heard no Ray
Charles, she panicked. [Wilson slips into the sassy falsetto and the hip swishing sashaying that will be associated with his most famous character, Geraldine.] The Queen say, “ . . . You’re gonna find Ray Charles.” Chris says
“Damn right, that’s where those records come from.” So the Queen’s running through the halls of the castle screamin’, “Chris gonna find Ray
Charles, honey. . . . What you say.”
Through this hilarious form of historical disjuncture, racial displacement (by
racializing both the hipster aspects of “Chris” and his queen,“Isabelle Johnson,”
in speech and motion), and ratcheting up the hipness quotient (by referencing
the widely revered—and crossed-over—musical artist Ray Charles),Wilson colorizes a white milieu in the least threatening way possible—by fictionalizing
and colorizing it. Even in Wilson’s small-screen debut, what Watkins describes
as the comic’s “frank reflections of typical black attitudes and flamboyant use of
the timbre and resonances of black street language” was presented in a way that
allowed him to move easily into the televisual mainstream.59
It was only a matter of time before Wilson was able to master the medium:
the intimacy, the immediacy, and the amiability of his performance style would
enable American audiences to welcome him into their homes via the electronic
hearth—at least for a little while. In the late sixties Wilson made frequent
appearances on the talk/variety show circuit doing guest spots on The Merv
Griffin Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and Rowan and
Martin’s Laugh In, as well as acting as guest host on The Tonight Show with Johnny
Carson. After two moderately successful television specials and a pilot (that was
viewed as “too satirical” by network brass), veteran television producer Bob
Henry was brought onboard along with a concept for a series that would truly
be focused on Flip. In the waning days of the variety show format, The Flip
Wilson Show premiered on NBC in September of 1970 as a retooling of the
genre (with a greater focus on comedy) and became an instant success.
The new variety series was truly Wilson’s show: the comic was directly
involved in every aspect of the series: from the design of the round stage (that
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he felt afforded greater intimacy with the audience) to the writing of the
sketches (over which the comic had close oversight).Wilson’s vision of the series
was extremely clear, and as producer Henry stated, “I told [the writers, makeup
and costume staffs, and the crew] the best thing we could do was keep out of
Flip’s way.”60 In many ways Wilson’s degree of creative control and comic
agency was unprecedented: “I’ve got all the freedom I could want in this show.
If it doesn’t work, I won’t have anyone to blame but myself.”61 But it did work.
One of the keys to the series’ success was that it had something for everyone.
His guest stars appealed to the older generation (black and white) with mainstream Hollywood film and television stars (including Lucille Ball and Bing
Crosby), as well as black entertainment stars known by white audiences (Lena
Horne and Louis Armstrong), and those who had not necessarily crossed over
(Mahalia Jackson and Billy Eckstine). For the boomers (black and white) there
was a wide range of stars with significant popular cultural cred from the world
of sports (including Muhammed Ali and Joe Namath), music (such as Aretha
Franklin and The Temptations), and comedy (including Cosby, Pryor, George
Carlin, and Lily Tomlin). Even Big Bird from Sesame Street and British broadcaster and satirist David Frost were guests on Wilson’s first show. The biggest
appeal of The Flip Wilson Show, however, was Flip Wilson, who Los Angeles Times
critic Robert Hilburn hailed as “one of the hottest comedians in the country”
on the eve of the series’ premiere.62
Often the pilot episode of a series gives the clearest picture of what the creator’s intentions for the series are (a sense of what they would like the series to
be) before the reviews, the first set of ratings, and the network notes based on
the ratings can begin to mold the show in a different image. Such was the case
for The Flip Wilson Show.The comic subscribed to the belief that the success of
the series depended on his “tenets of comedy”: “First, I’m a friend. The audience likes me. . . .The second thing is that they like my characters. . . .The third
thing is that I talk to an audience honestly. I don’t waste their time. I do my act
with everything I’ve got every second I’m on camera.”63 Wilson, their friend,
emerges from the audience and bounds onto the stage in the round setting.The
comic exudes hipness in his gray flared suit, magenta shirt, and gold and paisley
tie. Smiling broadly and making little bows to the audience,Wilson makes clear
that this is all about them. Even his opening monologue situates him as both
“one of them” and someone “sharing” something real with them—even if it is
being done while just telling them a story. Regaling the crowd about how
everyone has been asking him “What’s The Flip Wilson Show gonna be like?”The
question is repeated several times in reference to the folks calling him at home
“all hours of the night,” stopping him on the street, and even resorting to running into his car in order to ask the comic,“What’s The Flip Wilson Show gonna
be like?”With the slightly exaggerated gestures accompanying casual speech, the
comic maneuvers the audience into his confidence—he lets the audience know
what’s going on with him. Both the energy level of his delivery and the broad-
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ness of his gestures move up a level as he answers the oft-repeated question: “I
decided to put in a way to be as explicit as possible. . . . The best way to put it
would be to say (Wilson pauses for a little James Brownesque backward strut
step), ‘Watch out!’”
Smiling, clapping, assuring the audience that they are going to “dig it,”
Wilson continues developing his bonding with the “everyfolk” in the audience
by explaining his decisions about the show’s opening—that his initial desire to
do a big production number with great scenery and dancing girls (the comic
sashays to a tune of his own making) seemed a great idea until he saw the
$104,000 price tag. Determining that the cost was just “ridiculous” and that
“this show is gonna start off in the hole if you do it like that,” he comes up with
a solution that again positions him with the crowd: instead of the celebrity performing for them: “Everybody’s seen those fancy production numbers on the
other shows but how many people have actually seen $104,000? You know. I
decided that we’ll open the show by showing you what $104,000 actually looks
like. May I have the envelope please?” A trumpet flourish accompanies the
entrance of a tall, white, slightly stern looking guard in uniform carrying a large
envelope, which he hands to the comic. He stands, at ready, next to the comic.
As Wilson takes cash out of the envelope, does a quick double take in the guard’s
direction, “What are you doing with your hand on the gun? People can’t relax
and enjoy looking at the money with you standing there with your hand on the
gun.” Playfully, making a little move toward the guard (as though he is going to
try to get past him), the comic says,“I bet if I tripped you and ran, you couldn’t
catch me.”The crowd laughs and even the stern guard smiles slightly. Everybody
likes Flip. As he fans the cash for the audience, Wilson states, “This is it, ladies
and gentlemen, $104,000—[pauses slightly, again, as if letting them in on the
joke] $500 is actual cash. Now wasn’t that better than watching girls jumping
on the stage.” The audience laughs and applauds as the comic replaces the
money in the envelope. Again, the mischievous Wilson emerges as he twice
fakes a handoff to the guard, the way a child on the playground would play
“keep away” with a ball, saying, in a slightly higher pitched timbre, “Yea-ah,
Yea-ah.” Finally he hands it over to the guard with the parting phrase, “Here
you go brother.”Wilson’s clever opening is hardly revolutionary comedy. However, the opening, like the Alphabet song duet with Sesame Street’s Big Bird that
follows, exemplifies his “friend” tenet and the strategic mobilization of his likability in service to making his audience both broad and loyal—as one would
want friends to be.
Wilson’s second tenet regarding the likability of his characters speaks
directly to his ability to create a universalizing appeal with culturally specific
material. With Wilson’s Reverend Leroy in black tailcoat, white dickey, black
string tie, and spats, he is clearly visually constructed as a figure from a different
era, further accentuating the Calhoun-like (Amos ’n’ Andy) aura of the character. Offering a visual contrast to his “backups,” the Deacons, four black men
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(roughly Flip’s age and younger) dressed in plain contemporary black suits and
ties, white shirts, and gloves, and wearing white flowers on their lapels, the Reverend, a visual throwback, makes clear that this church is all about the present:
“Welcome to the church of what’s happening now.We don’t tell you what happened a long time ago or what happened in the future, we tell you what’s going
on now.” Strutting around the stage, à la sixties black evangelist Reverend Ike,
with a few quick-stepping moves more reminiscent of a soul (rather than
gospel) performer thrown in, the Reverend Leroy blends the old school Baptist
preacher, the Chitlin’ Circuit comic endman (who delivers the punch of the
joke), and the black hipster humor of his contemporary persona.The little growl
in his voice as it deepens and rises for emphasis, the rhythmic patter of his sermonettes, and the didactic one-liners act as homage to the past while the little
self-satisfied chuckles, smiles, and glances to the audience act as a signal to the
viewer that Wilson knows exactly what he is doing—a de facto wink to one
segment of his broad audience. Certainly, black audiences understood the interand extratextual sampling he utilized—the image of black hucksters (including
Kingfish and Calhoun) and the personage of Reverend Ike supplied commonplace cultural references. However, the foibles of the comically arrogant reverend and his performance, which for good and ill harkens back to earlier
televisual constructions of the black hucksters (Amos ’n’ Andy), provided an
uncritical celebration of a very old-school form of black humor with which
white audiences were also familiar.
Reverend Leroy made his television debut in a sketch that was as benign as
it was culturally specific. The character constructions and performance style in
the sketch that parodied the black church were familiar in African American
humor—from the ongoing appeals for funds (“Money is like blood, it needs to
circulate”) to indications that unimpeachable virtue and a vow of poverty were
not a part of the Reverend’s calling (when asked to move his blue Cadillac El
Dorado blocking the driveway, he replies with a wry smile, “The ‘raffles’ were
good to me this month”).The Reverend’s debut was also unchallenging for the
mainstream audience, supplying neither political directives nor nuanced cultural
edification. As Acham states, “Wilson’s engagement in Chitlin’ Circuit humor
was apparent and appreciated by black audiences raised on this type of humor.
. . . [When] he brought this to a mainstream audience, he did not disguise his
blackness and his routines were based in traditional African American comedy.”64 When transferred from his act onto the small screen, the flamboyant
antics and broadness of decidedly black humor in Wilson’s various comic alter
egos were extremely popular. However, the laughter generated by Wilson’s characters also proved disconcerting to those in the audience who viewed their
mainstream embrace warily. Arguably, no character was more popular or more
problematic than Geraldine Jones.
Flip Wilson’s Geraldine Jones was part Sapphire, part Foxy Brown (and, in
terms of fashion sensibility, part That Girl’s Ann Marie). Geraldine was alter-
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6. Flip Wilson’s Geraldine and Rev. Leroy bring cultural specificity to prime time. The
Flip Wilson Show (NBC) 1970–74. Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission
from NBC.
nately praised as a progressive construction of a black working-class girl and
vilified as a caricature of the bossy black woman. One might argue that the use
of drag can be seen as either a liberating device utilized to interrogate stereotypes or as a means of rearticulating (and, arguably, recodifying) them within the
context of black comedy. When Wilson did drag, it was both.
On one hand, Geraldine’s perfectly coiffed hair and miniskirted designer
wear were intended to look decidedly (and attractively) feminine. Geraldine’s
visage was carefully crafted to at least approximate the (hip) everywoman.Thus,
Wilson’s character was a far cry from either the lipstick-smeared, outrageously
costumed vaudeo drag of Uncle Miltie (Milton Berle), from television’s early
years, or the frat-boy version used by Martin Lawrence in his construction of a
ghetto-not-so-fabulous fly-girl wannabe, Sheneneh Jenkins, on his nineties netlet sitcom, Martin. In other words,Wilson attained a degree of drag credibility.65
Audiences viewed neither Lawrence’s nor Berle’s characters as women because
they were intended as caricatured comic devices for broad and physical humor;
however, Geraldine, unlike her drag predecessor or progeny, took on a life of her
own. Wilson believed that “the secret of the success of Geraldine was that she’s
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not a putdown of women. She’s smart, she’s loyal [and] she’s sassy. Most drag
impersonation was a drag. But women can like Geraldine, men can like Geraldine, everyone can like Geraldine.”66 Much of the laughter was generated by
the cherubic faced Flip, recognizable as Geraldine, completely immersed in the
character—not exactly playing it straight but playing it earnestly. Thus, while
there was the acknowledgment that Wilson was doing drag, Geraldine, arguably,
became the iteration of black womanhood most familiar to the American television audience in the seventies.
On the other hand, there were aspects of Geraldine that not everybody
liked. Although, as Watkins notes, “her trademark quips—‘When you’re hot,
you’re hot; when you’re not, you’re not,’ ‘The devil made me do it’ and ‘What
you see is what you get’—became national catch phrases, part of everyone’s
vocabulary,” so too did a problematic construction of black womanhood as
overtly sexual, as possessing questionable intellectual acuity (at least, in academic
terms), and as more than slightly assertive and outspoken. In the character’s television debut in a sketch featuring British journalist (and glitterati) David Frost,
Geraldine Jones is introduced as the “average woman.” When Wilson emerges,
clad in purple minidress with matching hose, shoes, and purse (and, of course,
hair in what became her signature “flip”), Geraldine struts, dances, and poses as
she makes her way down the runway to Frost.When Frost attempts to make the
chivalrous gesture of kissing her hand, Geraldine pulls away, saying,“Watch what
you’re kissing, honey.” During the “interview” Geraldine pivots back and forth
in the swivel chair saucily while admiring her own appearance with the pronouncement, “What you see is what you get,” punctuated with a snap and
“Woooo” (a feminized, high-pitched version of James Brown’s patented
“lyric”). The crowd goes crazy, and Frost, who was also viewed as a notorious
playboy, quips, “Promises, promises.” Her responses to Frost’s inquiries are laced
with sexual innuendo: whether the blissful shiver and “Woooo” when first talking about her boyfriend, “Killer” (who, although never seen, resonates with the
aura of the “black buck”), or her recounting that, in a childhood without television, “playing behind the couch” was her primary activity.
Interestingly, Geraldine was given more sexual agency than many black
women on television: as the fried chicken (!) delivery girl she flirted shamelessly
with actor/athlete/activist Jim Brown, and she encouraged and then spurned
the advances of quarterback playboy Joe Namath (sending Killer to the rendezvous “in the booth in the back at the table in the dark” in her stead). In what
Wilson considered the funniest Geraldine moment, Miss Jones appears as a
Playboy bunny, the ultimate symbol of woman as sex object, with old Hollywood stalwart, actor/singer Bing Crosby, as a slightly inebriated conventioneer.
Despite the network expressing concerns over the character’s costumes getting
“too skimpy” (and their desire for wardrobe approval), Geraldine makes her
entrance, sauntering down a sweeping staircase, clad in a strapless one-piece,
bunny ears, tail, white collar, and black tie.
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Crosby: I see but I don’t believe.
Geraldine: You better believe it, ’cause you ain’t gonna see it.
While Crosby’s conventioneer makes a halfhearted play for Geraldine’s affections, which is staved off by her mention of Killer, one wonders if the uproarious laughter generated by “bunny drag” is also inflected by both Eurocentric
notions of beauty and an ahistorical construction of black woman as sex object.
Yet Geraldine’s sexual agency was mitigated—particularly in terms of her primary relationship with the eternally absent Killer—in a manner that seemed to
hearken back to aspects of the desexualized mammy rather than embody the
sexual revolution ethos.
When Frost inquires whether she and “Mr. Killer” are engaged, Geraldine
replies, “Sort of. He gave me a ring, but I couldn’t keep up the payments.”This
exchange, as well as others that address Killer’s possessiveness and a degree of his
disinterest, seems akin to the dynamic between an early televisual representation
of the “good” black woman waiting for the purportedly unreliable black man
(the happy domestic/mammy, Beulah, and her partially committed and sporadically employed beau, Bill).At the same time, the threat of violence ensuring her
fidelity (the boyfriend’s name is Killer) and the flirtatiousness that informs all of
her interactions (with black and white guest stars) complicate Geraldine’s image
of black womanhood and sexuality, which is simultaneously valued and devalued, empowered and disempowered.
This tension is further problematized by Geraldine’s assertiveness, which is
undercut by the limited nature of her vocabulary (which, arguably, reads as a signifier of her level of intelligence). From her assertion that she wasn’t in a “relationship” with Killer, but rather they were “going together,” to her
admonishment of Frost’s praise of her as “a couturier” because of her selfdesigned ensemble (“You better watch your mouth.You don’t know me. . . . I’ll
turn this television studio out.”), the responses seem to be coded by class as well
as race. The notions of strong assertions (tainted with the threat of physicality)
and limited understanding further play out when Geraldine is asked to comment on the state of women in America; she supplies both extraneous additional
information and a patented one-liner that does not directly address the question: “Your show and the news are my favorite programs. I listen to all of them
. . . and can’t nobody tell Geraldine what to say. . . . The cost of living is going
up and the chance of living is going down.” (Again, punctuated with the snap,
swivel, and “Woooo.”)
Although at the end of this scene Geraldine convinces Frost to allow her to
regale the audience with a lounge singer–like version of the standard “All of
Me,” after which he sweeps her up and carries her offstage, the banter that precedes the denouement provides yet another moment of differentiation between
Geraldine and the comic personae of other black female comics of Wilson’s day.
When she insists on being allowed to sing, Frost quips,“I didn’t have this trouble
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with Moms Mabley,” to which Geraldine replies,“I didn’t have this trouble with
Johnny Carson either.” As will be discussed in chapter 4, Moms Mabley’s comic
persona, as revisionist mammy, presented one of the few iterations of black
female sexual agency in mainstream comedy that was seen as acceptable because
her artifice made it impossible for her to be seen as a sex object.Wilson’s Geraldine was constructed repeatedly as sex object, although both the narrative of the
sketches and the acknowledgment of drag acted as mitigating factors. Nevertheless, during Geraldine’s heyday the black man playing a black woman was
given greater comic license than actual black comediennes—as well as greater
mainstream acceptance. Geraldine’s retort that she didn’t have this trouble with
Carson speaks to both the comic’s long-standing relationship to the king of late
night and the mainstream embrace of his image of the black everywoman.
There is still disagreement about the impact and importance of the manner
in which The Flip Wilson Show brought ethnic humor back into prime time.
Donald Bogle points out that for some black televisual spectators the fact that
Wilson’s characters “were funny when performed within the black community”
did not assuage their concerns that once “taken out of an African American
context and put on white television . . . [they] could be misinterpreted.”67
According to Christine Acham, critiques rooted in “the tenets of uplift, [and]
the fear of what white America might think of the black characters that Wilson
presented,” were so preoccupied with the nature of mainstream (read white)
audiences’ readings of the series that they often underestimated both the power
and the pleasures of the text for black viewers.68 In actuality both assertions are
valid, particularly when one juxtaposes the Chitlin’ Circuit–informed, broad
ethnic humor of Wilson’s show (full of mugging, misspeaking wordplay, and
fundamentally uncritical takes on contemporary black life) and the social relevance dramatic programming emerging on network television in the late sixties
and early seventies, including The Mod Squad, The Young Lawyers, or even Room
222 (each of which in its own right had problematic representational politics).
Wilson’s series, like his act, was structured for both broad appeal and the adherence to his comic sensibility, which was driven not by social critique but rather
by his own, albeit culturally informed, notion of what was funny.
The aspects of Wilson’s show that were out of sync with black culture in
the age of black power did not go unnoticed—even in the entertainment mainstream. In his 1971 Life feature on the comic, John Leonard asserted that “in a
time of Black Panthers and savage rhetoric,”Wilson had succeeded in “tak[ing]
the threat out of the fact of Blackness.”69 Although one must process Leonard’s
statement a bit warily within the sociopolitical context of an era when, as J. Fred
MacDonald stated, “Thanks to Wilson, Americans fell in love with racial comedy,” it speaks to how and why Wilson’s show, as well as his comic personae, had
a life span far shorter than one would have anticipated given its initial success.70
During the trek from Negro to black in the waning days of the civil rights and
black power era,Wilson’s comic personae showed blackness to the mainstream—
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celebrating the unique voices, humor, and cultural practices past and present—
without actually engaging, telling, what it meant to be black in America at that
historical moment. Thus, the criticism of Wilson’s comedy as diffusing his
blackness is inaccurate, but I would assert that the comedy was decontextualized. His series, rightfully lauded as bringing the black voice into the mainstream of American comedy, represented black humor, centering it within that
one-hour time slot without relating it to the realities of blackness (on and off
prime time) during the other twenty-three.
Wilson maintained “my show is my statement,” and as the seventies drew to
a close, the facts of blackness were beginning to be addressed directly in comedic
social discourse, black film and music, and black popular culture at large. In popular consciousness, by the end of his series Wilson’s comic persona was tied to
the show and to the characters that it made famous—particularly, Geraldine.
When tributes to Wilson were held at the Museum of Television and Radio in
Los Angeles and New York in 1993, the comic fielded numerous questions
about his most famous character, from her inspiration (named after the girl who
got away in his adolescence) to his comfort with drag (dating back to his childhood performance as a black Clara Barton). As if to end discussion of Geraldine
(and stave off requests for her reincarnation), Wilson stated, “Geraldine carried
me longer than my mother did—and I enjoyed it. And I am always flattered and
honored when someone requests and acknowledges their affection for Geraldine—and it was fun but I’m approaching 60 and I would rather always have
her be that fun fresh memory that she is and I think that Mr.Wilson will go the
rest of the way on his own.”71 On his own, however,Wilson’s likability and the
cultural specificity of his black comic voice, vital elements in his mainstream
popularity, were not easily transferable after the end of his series’ run, either to
the Cosbyesque Charlie and Company in the eighties or to his medium of second
choice, cinema.
In 1971, at the height of the series’ popularity, Wilson articulated both his
comic and his ideological imperatives: “What I’m trying to say through the
show is that the Old Uncle Tom of the Negro is not necessary. That a Negro
can stand up and be a man, simply by being himself—just like me.”72 The statement seems more than slightly ironic given that the comic’s comedic bread and
butter came from Wilson’s standing up and being a “woman,” Geraldine. Nevertheless, on both stage and small screen Wilson achieved that goal and, in so
doing, won the battle to maintain comedy’s friendly relation. Just as Wilson’s
“handshake” (slapping hands [in the “give me five” fashion], knocking elbows,
and bumping hips), a play on physicalized greetings within the black community, was fleetingly appropriated as a sign of “down-ness” in mainstream American popular culture and later abandoned as no longer “hip,” his comic’s persona,
tied to an individualistic notion of black representational politics, lost the war
in staying in tune with the changing tides of black thought and popular culture.
This does not diminish Wilson’s comic legacy: by bringing black voices with
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inner-city vernacular and ties to traditional forms of black humor into the
mainstream,Wilson provided a point of departure for a new comedic discursive
strategy. He opened up the possibility for the African American condition to be
both subject and object in stand-up told by an unabashedly, specifically black
voice. As Bruce Britt stated in his 1998 homage to the comic, “his show was
gentle, classy and soulful—the television equivalent of a Motown tune”; and by
1974 Wilson was no longer “hip” in the new age of funk and disco and the
“raunchy realism” appearing on the comedic landscape. Wilson’s time passed,
perhaps, too quickly; Pryor’s was just beginning.
Pryor : From Neg ro to Blac k
Traces of Cosby’s universalist riffing, Wilson’s culturally specific cast of
characters, and Gregory’s social commentary can all be seen in the evolving
comic personae of Richard Pryor. As Pryor himself noted, “Dick Gregory used
to have stuff in Jet magazine. That’s how I started reading his material and
do[ing] it on stage.That was my first breakthrough. . . .Then I moved on to Bill
Cosby . . . [impersonating Cosby]. And I know [doing the hand gestures as well]
. . . I made a lot of money as Bill Cosby.”73 Indeed, early Pryor was extremely
Cosbyesque—the clean-shaven rubbery-faced kid in the Beatle suit doing
physical shtick on The Ed Sullivan Show while recounting schoolyard exploits
(“Look at Richard running, but he’s running cool”). In 1967, when the comic
made a premature exit from an appearance onstage at the Las Vegas Aladdin
Hotel Stage (he left in the middle of a performance), Pryor stated that he knew
his “days of pretending to be as slick and colorless as Cosby were numbered.
There was a world of junkies and winos, pool hustlers and prostitutes, women
and family screaming inside [his] head, trying to be heard.”74
Pryor spent two years in Berkeley, reading Malcolm X, engaging a group of
black intellectuals (including Ishmael Reed, Claude Brown, and Cecil Brown)
ensconced in the Bay Area in the early seventies and visiting bars, clubs, and
street corners to observe myriad aspects of black life. During this time a transformation took place for Pryor, and when he returned to performing, first to
predominantly black audiences at Redd Foxx’s club in Los Angeles and the
Village Gate in New York, the comic had “killed the Cosby” in his act. Having
abandoned the pursuit of audience acceptance through the comic reification of
middle-class norms and mores, Pryor offered his audiences characters,
metaphors, and language that was earthy, profane, and true, rooted not only in
the lived experiences of those he had observed during his Berkeley exile but
also those who peopled the sketchy spaces of the Peoria, Illinois, brothel run by
his family (his grandmother was the madam) and his own coming-of-age experiences that involved constant engagement with moral ambiguity, as well as
numerous encounters with a distinctly midwestern brand of racism.Thus, Pryor
began to challenge “traditional show business assumptions about the viability of
ungentrified black material and an unmoderated black voice . . . [and broke]
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with blacks’ long standing tradition of subterfuge and concealment of inner
community customs.”75
After the Berkeley years the plethora of voices began to coalesce in Pryor’s
comic persona. However, as early as 1968 the seeds of the burgeoning persona
could be seen on his self-titled first comedy album—as was indicated by the
cover. Emblazoned with the image of Pryor gone “native” (almost naked in a
parody of National Geographic photographs of African tribesmen), the album, like
the cover art, offered a contentiously hilarious picture and “routines like ‘Super
Nigger’ revealed the voice that was breaking through. A point of view was percolating beneath the surface”: “We find Super Nigger, with his X-Ray vision
that enables him to see through everything except Whitey, disguised as Clark
Washington, mild-mannered custodian for the Daily Planet.”76 In this new
persona one sees the uncontainable and unpredictable “crazy nigger” to come—
and one also realizes that this iteration of Pryor will have almost nothing in
common with the easily assimilated “Super Negro” types.
During this comic metamorphosis, spanning the end of the sixties and early
seventies, Pryor simultaneously played with teasing out his burgeoning persona
and, after the critical praise gained from his skillful wedding of pathos and wit
as “Piano Man” in Lady Sings the Blues, parlaying his newfound celebrity into
television and film roles. Pryor’s life on the small screen reveals both the growing popularity of his profane and politicized voice and its lack of palatability in
most mainstream televisual spaces—when Pryor was allowed to be Pryor. At
times the comic power of his persona was simply underutilized; at others it was
woefully misplaced, as exemplified in his appearance on the musical family
domestic comedy The Partridge Family. In an episode entitled “The Soul Club”
he and Lou Gossett Jr. played the patrons of a struggling Detroit club, who are
saved by the family performing a street-party benefit.77 One can almost hear
the smirk in Pryor’s voice when he utters the line,“We’ll have the biggest party
ever and go down in flames”—an interesting choice of words, given that the
year is 1971 and the setting is Detroit. In this part of the televisual universe,
there was simply no place for a voice as contentious, disruptive, and provocatively funny as Pryor’s.
However, as Dick Gregory said, on the stand-up stage in this same era
“[Pryor] did brain surgery on America’s head.”78 His routines embodied both
the rage and the vulnerability inherent in the burgeoning tide of heightened
black awareness. As James McPherson surmised in his 1975 feature in New York
Times Magazine: “Almost single-handedly, [Pryor] is creating a new style in
American comedy, a style that some of his admirers call theater because there is
no other category available for what he does.”79 The risks that Pryor took in his
comedy seemed driven by the desire to articulate multiple forms of blackness—
black voices—that had not previously been heard. As Pryor himself stated,
“When I do characters, [I] have to do it true. . . . If I can’t do it, I’ll stop in the
middle rather than pervert and turn it into ‘Tomism.’ . . . [There’s a] thin line
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between laughing with and laughing at.”80 The divergences between Pryor’s and
Wilson’s use of characters are worth noting, particularly in relationship to the
ease with which their stand-up personae could cross over into mainstream
media (namely film and television). As in Wilson’s case, Pryor’s characters
evolved inside the comic’s stand-up act and spoke to varied constructions of
urban blackness. Unlike Wilson’s, however, Pryor’s voices more often than not
lacked the amenable nature that made Wilson’s characters likable to a broad
audience. Furthermore, unrestrained by the mainstream sensibilities that had
previously guided his comedy, Pryor challenged the audience through his use of
characters although, as the comic stated matter-of-factly in 1975, “When I
didn’t do characters, white folks loved me.”81
Pryor, who wrote for and guest starred on The Flip Wilson Show, brought a
comic edge that could not easily be softened for television.82 His stand-up (or
sketch comedy) appearances on television often generated an excitement and
volatility that drew audiences and scared network executives. As J. Fred MacDonald wrote in Blacks and White TV, “As seductive and popular as Pryor was
with live audiences, his humor possessed a racially political quality which was
foreign to network television.”83 Yet regardless of the venue, whether as a writer
or a performer, Pryor brought that sensibility to the television efforts—when he
had some degree of autonomy. In Lily Tomlin’s 1973 comedy special, the “Juke
and Opal” scene provided a seriocomic interlude with equal parts anger, cynicism, longing, and wit. Penned by a writing staff that included Pryor, the sketch
featured the comic as Juke, a charming junkie, and Tomlin as Opal, his lover and
coproprietor of a soul-food joint. The insightful and incisive humor was
anchored in the characters’ understanding of themselves and the world in which
they lived—during the beginning of the post-soul era, when it became clear
that the promises of the Dream had been either deferred or denied.This awareness of the urban American condition can be seen in Juke’s and Opal’s observations about the effectiveness of government-funded work/training programs:
Juke: I was doing the suit and tie thing last week. Now I learned how to do a
job they don’t need to.
Opal: Sometimes I think the only jobs from job training go to those doing the
training.
Juke also encounters a young white liberal couple, survey “constituents” for the
local congressman, asking invasive personal questions about a variety of issues
(including addiction) with a mixture of ignorance and arrogance. (Although
Juke answers he’s addicted right now, he asks them not to write that down,
“That’s personal.”) When Juke confiscates their clipboard and begins to ask
them pointed but ludicrous questions, the implied mistrust of failed governmental efforts and lack of genuine concern for the underclass is palpable:
Liberal Guy: We don’t make up these questions.
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Juke: Gee, golly.
Liberal Guy: Try to understand.
Opal: Try to understand, we do make up the answers.
Juke: Press conference is over. Thank you, Mr. Cronkite.
As the sketch ends, Juke asks Opal for money, “I need it. Either I’m gonna get
busted or you’re gonna give me the bread.” Over the objections of the Liberal
Guy and Girl (“You know what he’s going to do with it”), Opal acquiesces and
creates a cover story—as much for Juke and herself as for the liberals—which
makes it seem as though Juke can do the right thing, “I know what he’s gonna
do. He’s gonna get me 10 lbs. of potatoes. I like the little red potatoes for my
potato soup.” As the liberals leave, Juke admonishes them for both their judgment and their inherent lack of understanding of his position as well as Opal’s:
“You wrong, man. I ain’t a bad cat or nothing. [Because] you hurt me and I
wasn’t trying to interfere in your life.”84 The pathos and political commentary
in the sketch, and the entire special, resonates with the postindustrial realities
and the political disillusionment of the post-Watergate era: the comic, as part of
the writing staff, won an Emmy.
Pryor’s act was both topical and timeless, designed to challenge the audience, exemplified in the routine “Junkie and Wino,” featured on his That Nigger’s
Crazy album, as well as on Richard Pryor Live in Concert (1979). After having
advised the young junkie to “lay off that shit, nigger . . . shit done made you null
and void,” the Wino’s sociopolitical advice can be found in his asides about the
war on drugs (“They call it an epidemic now cuz white folks are using it”); and
his final piece of advice speaks to the power dynamics between whites and
blacks (“You don’t know how to deal with the white man, that’s yo problem. I
know how to deal with him—that’s why I’m in the position I am”). By depicting “the wino as a city-living country wit and the junkie as a wasted young
urban zombie,” Pryor, “an artist/cocaine addict himself, provided nuance to the
difference between addiction to heroin and alcohol and to how it would eventually affect the entire black community,” as well as the humanizing vision of
cross-generational despair.85
As Mel Watkins states, Pryor incorporated pride in black folkways and the
exuberance and joy of much black humor and thereby “completely unmasked
the complex matrix of pride, self-mockery, blunt confrontation of reality, double
edged irony, satiric wit, assertive defiance, poetic obscenity, and verbal acuity
that finally define the elusive entity that may be called African American
humor.”86 In many ways Pryor’s comic personae existed in this intersection of
contemporary black comic sensibility and folk humor as exemplified by the
Pryor character with the greatest longevity, Mudbone. Through this sly, meandering country philosopher, whose voice (equal parts Mississippi Delta blues
singer and early Chitlin’ Circuit storyteller), the comic embodied the black folk
construction of the trickster that also resonated within the street humor of
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urban black America. In his autobiography, Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences, Mudbone, who acts as the omniscient narrator for the comic’s life story,
tells “the truth” about the kind of comedy that Pryor was compelled to do:“See
I was honest with the motherfucker. I told him comedy—real comedy—wasn’t
only tellin’ jokes. It was about telling the truth. Talking about life. Makin’ light
of the hard times. Definitely not as funny as it looks . . . you start telling the
truth to people and people gonna look at you like you was askin’ to fuck their
mama or somethin’. The truth is gonna be funny but it is gonna scare the shit
outta folks.”87
Pryor rejected the notion of deemphasizing cultural difference and economic and political disparities between black and white lives; rather, his comic
persona embraced the identity of an equal-opportunity offender: everything
and everyone was fair game, including himself. The tumultuous events in his
offstage life fed his act, as exemplified in his depiction of his rapid romance with
drugs in “Cocaine” and his recounting of how “being funny saved [my] ass,”
quite literally, in “Prison.”Yet the personalized stories provided multiple levels
of commentary: his “I Killed My Car” begins as a self-revealing description of
the death knell of marriage number three (as he takes a Magnum and shoots the
car in which his wife is planning to depart), and it evolves into a commentary
on the mistrust of white authority: “Then the police came and I went into the
house because they got Magnums, too. And they don’t shoot cars, they shoot
nig-gars.” Furthermore, Pryor’s espoused belief that “black people can’t disassociate themselves from race because we’re living in a white world” acted as a
pedagogical imperative for his lived experiences as material for critiquing the
differences between being black and white in America, as exemplified in the
“Just Us” routine from his 1975 release Is It Something I Said: “I went to jail for
tax evasion—I didn’t know a motherfucking thing about no taxes. I told the
judge,‘Your honor, I forgot.’ He said,‘You’ll remember next year, nigger.’ [Then
they] start riding on your ass.They give niggers time like it’s lunch down there.
You go down there looking for justice and that’s what you get—just us.”
From the freebasing accident, which left him with third-degree burns over
75 percent of his body, recounted with mitigated veracity in Richard Pryor: Live
on the Sunset Strip to the terrifyingly funny material on his heart attack from
Richard Pryor Live in Concert, Pryor still managed to shade the humor with racial
specificity:“[After the heart attack] I woke up in an ambulance, right? And there
wasn’t nothin’ but white people starin’ at me. I say, ‘Ain’t that a bitch. I done
died and wound up in the wrong motherfuckin’ heaven. Now, I gotta listen to
Lawrence Welk for the rest of my days.’” Likewise, his emergent black consciousness acted as fodder for the comedic discursive mill in the “black power”
routine: “I was a Negro for twenty-three years—I gave it up . . . there was no
room for advancement.”
For Pryor the trek from Negro to black went through nigger. Beginning in
the seventies, the comic’s use of the word nigger became a hot-button issue for
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both his critics and his audiences. One might argue that Pryor deflated the negative power of the word by using it to describe all black folks as he incorporated characters and stories culled from his childhood among the dispossessed
of his native Peoria and his stints on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Nevertheless, in his
act, his life, and the titles to his comedy albums (including That Nigger’s Crazy,
on which his initial observations about law enforcement appear), Pryor used the
term—both casually and pointedly—to differentiate black and white experiences of American life. “Police in y’all’s neighborhood ‘Hello, Officer Timson,
going bowling tonight?’ ‘Why, yes. Ah, nice Pinto you got there.’ Niggers don’t
know ’em like that. . . . See, white folks get a ticket, they pull over,‘Hey, officer,
yes, glad to be of help . . . cheerio!’ Niggers be talkin’ ’bout, ‘I am reaching into
my pocket for my license, cuz I don’t want there to be no motherfuckin’ accident.’” In the stand-up world Pryor was repeatedly lauded for presenting the
experiences of the black underclass with startling clarity and equal candor, as
Dick Gregory stated in the HBO documentary Mo’ Funny, “articulating the
[black] experience the way we hear each other do it.” While Pryor’s routines,
undoubtedly, exposed an insider’s view of multiple segments of the black community, they also illustrated how the personal was political.
7. Richard Pryor’s profane, profound, and painfully personal
performance. Richard Pryor:
Live on the Sunset Strip (1982).
Directed by Joe Layton. Photo
from Photofest. Reproduced
with permission from Columbia Pictures.
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By 1982 the comic offered an undertaking that was more than a semantic
reenvisioning of previous assertions about the N word. However, the impetus to
recuperate the word were rooted in notions of black pride and the articulation
of the African American condition born during his Berkeley walkabout. Thus,
it was not surprising that when Wattstax (1973), the film capturing the celebration of black music and culture in the neighborhood known as the site of an
explosion of rage and frustration in the riots six years earlier, was released, Pryor
played a prominent role.The description of Wattstax in The Death of Rhythm and
Blues captures the quintessential post-soul moment: “On August 20, 1972, Bell
and Jackson stood side by side in the middle of the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum, chanted ‘I Am Somebody,’ and then raised their fists in the black power
salute before a hundred thousand music fans.With that gesture began a long day
of live music by every Stax artist to raise money for the Watts Summer Festival.
It was a symbol of black self-sufficiency.”88 Pryor acted as part casual commentator/part Greek chorus in filmed excerpts between the concert performances
of his fellow artists on the legendary Stax label, including Isaac Hayes and The
Staples Singers. His commentaries focused on the lived experiences of blacks in
California with startling candor. Long before the events that would incite a second uprising in black Los Angeles, he addressed the issue of police brutality:
“California’s a weird place. . . . They have laws for pedestrians. You know, like
you can cross the street but they don’t have laws for [black] people at night
when cops accidentally shoot people.They accidentally shoot more niggers out
here than any place in the world. Every time you pick up a paper:‘Nigger accidentally shot in the ass.’ How do you accidentally shoot a nigger six times in the
chest? [In white voice] ‘Well, my gun fell and it just went crazy.’”89 An essential
element of Pryor’s comic persona was its rawness in terms of its outspoken
viewpoint, its language, and the vulnerability it revealed to audiences. Just as his
act reflected the ongoing saga of his public and private travails, Pryor’s comic
persona was in conversation with the evolution of his personal and political
consciousness.
In the famous Africa bit from Richard Pryor: Live on Sunset Strip (1982)
Pryor shares a genuine epiphany that, like his early assertion about Negro-ness,
speaks to both an ideological and a stylistic shift for the comic, as well as the
abandonment of the word nigger, which had been a staple in the comic’s lexicon for a significant part of his career:
One thing that happened to me that was magic was that I was leaving, sitting in the hotel lobby, and a voice said, “What do you see? Look around.”
And I looked around, and I looked around, and I saw people of all colors
and shapes, and the voice said, “You see any niggers?” I said, “No.” It said,
“You know why? ’Cause there aren’t any.”There ain’t no niggers in Africa!
’Cause I’d been there three weeks and hadn’t said it once. And it started
making me cry, man. All that shit. All the acts I’ve been doing. As an artist
and comedian. Speaking and trying to say something. And I been saying
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that.That’s a devastating fucking word.That has nothing to do with us.We
are from a place where they first started people.
In the seventies, after the golden age of blaxploitation and before the emergence
of the buppie, during an era when black nationalist mobilization of Afrocentrism was slowly transforming into an era driven by an almost marginally
historicized (see Roots) fashion-driven cultural embrace, any comedic articulation of blackness could not help but be contingent and conflicted, and Pryor
gave voice to these strong, fluid, and contentious notions of blackness.
As Jill Nelson states in her review of Pryor’s autobiography, “What could
we expect from this man who at his best balanced precariously on a comic edge,
who used the joy and tragedy of his own life and the lives of those derisively
called niggers—pre-hip-hop, before it was spelled ‘Niggaz’ and declared cool—
to create not simply comedy, but streetwise social commentary?”90 By extrapolation, one can see the comic lineage that connects Pryor to the post-soul
comics. Pryor’s direct and indirect influence (via the first- and second-wave
comics like Murphy and Rock) on the Def Jam generation is inestimable. Pryor,
inspired by blue comic extraordinaire of the previous generation Redd Foxx,
folded aspects of his predecessor’s raunch and rawness into his own particular
sociopolitically informed comedic mixture. Likewise, these post-soul comics, as
will be discussed in greater detail in the chapter focusing on Dave Chappelle
and the Def Jam persona, created something markedly different from Pryor’s
comedic discourse—particularly in relation to the comic’s problematic gender
politics. Pryor’s material often deals with women in relation to their sexual use
to men. In one routine acknowledging the differences between a white and
black male’s response to a date ending with only a goodnight kiss, he forwards
the black male’s position (“Nigger spent $35—somebody’s gonna fuck”), an
assertion with which the hypothetical date’s father agrees. In another, dealing
with “your woman leaving you,” the woman is given the power to deeply
wound the male ego in his most vulnerable place, his sexual prowess:
Man: I know the dick was good to ya. If it wasn’t, why was you hollerin’?
Woman: I was hollerin’ to keep from laughin’ in your face.
Undoubtedly, these joke series illustrate how Pryor’s sexual politics is
informed by both the problematic black pride discursive that bell hooks refers
to as “a dick thing” and an old-school bad-ass black machismo. Pryor, however,
like his predecessor and unlike his progeny, while clearly engaging in objectification, does not exhibit the kind of hatred of women required to label his comedy misogynistic. Although Pryor may use the word pussy, he does not reduce
women to the sum of their reproductive parts, the way Eddie Murphy does in
Raw, where women are only “pussy” and “predator.” One might argue that
Pryor’s sexual politics are inflected by a form of gender- and race-based selfawareness that alternately lauds and lampoons black masculine responses to
women, as well as varying degrees of female sexual agency, which dilute the
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sexism in the comedic mixture. On the other hand, it might also be that Pryor,
because he is Pryor, is simply given more slack.91
Despite the popularity of Pryor’s work with young audiences (black and
white) and the successes he experienced in mainstream film comedy (Silver
Streak, 1976), Pryor was still deemed truly unfriendly to prime time, and his
forays into television were marked by controversy.When The Richard Pryor Show
premiered, it came into a network world (NBC) where LOP (least objectionable programming) was still a guiding force. Despite the fact that Pryor’s humor
seemed better suited for late night and his history with the network (when
Pryor hosted Saturday Night Live in 1975—the episode that debuted the famous
“word association” bit with Chevy Chase—the live show was put on sevensecond delay), NBC gave the series the green light.92 Whether inspired by the
overwhelming critical and popular acclaim for The Richard Pryor Special
(1997)—which, for the most part, allowed Pryor to be Pryor—or the belief that
they could repeat the comic-centered sketch/variety show success that they had
experienced with Wilson in the early seventies, it seems an understatement to
say that in fall of 1977 NBC executives were anxious about what Pryor and his
cadre of talented young writers (with head writer Paul Mooney) and comics
(John Witherspoon, Tim Reid, Marsha Warfield, Sandra Bernhard, and Robin
Williams) would do with an hour of prime-time programming. Furthermore,
in a televisual landscape where Happy Days was the king of television comedy,
The Richard Pryor Show was doomed.
One might hypothesize that NBC scheduled the show at the beginning of
the Tuesday night prime-time lineup—and during family viewing hours—in an
attempt to set clear parameters in terms of content. If indeed this was the case,
the strategy was unsuccessful, and it placed Pryor in an untenable position.The
battle with network Standards and Practices began with the first show and
ended after the fourth and final episode of the series. In fact, the battle that signaled the end of an amenable relationship between Pryor and NBC involved
the series’ opening.The sketch, which never aired, codified the contentious tone
of the rest of the series—the closing bit of three of the four episodes involved
the “network” somehow trying to control Pryor’s ability to leave: in the first
episode bars slammed across his dressing room door; in the second he emerges
from the swamp set, with broken shackles on his wrists and the sounds of
barking dogs in the background; and in the third he is, literally, backed into the
corner, guarded by a lion.
The long-lost opening clearly annunciated what would be the series’ undoing and why Pryor would walk away after four episodes.93 In medium close-up
a shirtless Pryor, on a darkened stage, oozing “earnest” enthusiasm speaks
directly to the audience:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to The Richard Pryor Show.
My name is Richard Pryor and I’m so happy to have my own show, I don’t
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know what to do. I could jump up and down and sing “Yankee Doodle.”
There’s a lot that’s been written about me: am I gonna have a show? Am I
not gonna have a show? Well, I’m having a show. People say,“How can you
have a show? You have to compromise. You have to give up everything.”
[chuckles] Is that a joke or what? Look at me . . .
The camera pulls back into a medium close-up as Pryor says,“I’m standing here
naked—I’ve given up absolutely nothing.”The camera pulls back into a long shot
that reveals Pryor in his glory—with all the anatomical correctness of a Ken doll.
After the network’s decision to cut the sketch, Pryor spoke with both anger and
incredulousness:“What it’s about is censorship and I can’t work under these conditions. The sketch is important because I worked on it, it’s about me and I’m
the one they hired. If they didn’t want Richard Pryor they should have gone out
and gotten somebody else.”94 While the implications here are obvious, one wonders how either the network—or Pryor himself—could have thought that the
union between the Peacock and the self-proclaimed “crazy nigger” could have
ended any other way, particularly given the social and televisual climate.
Yet despite its woefully brief run and the prolonged tussle with Standards
and Practices, when one watches The Richard Pryor Show, one can discern how
the comic’s persona was in conversation with the era.95 The series premiered in
September of 1977: a year after Jimmy Carter had beaten Gerald Ford in a presidential election that failed to meaningfully engage the postindustrial realities of
the urban poor, the same year that Roots became A Novel for Television and
sociocultural sensation by depicting an unseen chapter of African American history. On the network front the Tandem years of social sitcoms were coming to
a close.With Maude, All in the Family, and Good Times limping through their last
seasons, the brief ghetto sitcom boom was ending as televisual representations
of black kids moved from their neighborhood (What’s Happening, ending in
1978) to that of their white benefactor (Diff’rent Strokes, beginning in 1979), and
even Sanford (Redd Foxx) had left Sanford and Son.96 The black presence in the
Nielsen top twenty in 1977 consisted of Isaac (Ted Lange), the bartender on The
Love Boat, and Detective Harris (Ron Glass) on Barney Miller (unless, of course,
you want to include various NFL players on Monday Night Football).97 In terms
of prime-time television, in the days before stand-up comedy and the cable
boom, there was not a place for Pryor.
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986, with the exception of a brief
comeback in the early nineties Pryor was unable to perform after the late
eighties. Despite declining health, however, Pryor remained until his death one
of the most influential American comedians of the late twentieth century, and
he is universally regarded as a major comedic influence by the generation of
comic actors who followed him and who will be examined later in this volume.
His impact is exemplified by the 2003 documentary tribute to the comic, I Ain’t
Dead Yet, Motherfucker, in which a cavalcade of stand-up all-stars (from Whoopi
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Goldberg, Robin Williams, and Dave Chappelle to Jon Stewart, Chris Rock,
and Margaret Cho) unabashedly sing very specific and personalized praises for
the comic’s contribution not just to comedy but to their comedy. In 1998 Pryor
became the first recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for
Humor.98 Lawrence J. Wilker, president of the Kennedy Center, praised the
comic, saying, “Pryor is an American who has made a significant contribution
to humor. He really used humor the same way that Mark Twain did: to show us
our foibles and to put us on the right path. He opened up race as a topic to talk
about openly, before both black and white audiences perhaps were ready for
that.”99 While Wilker’s statement speaks to the significance of Pryor’s performance in both social and cultural terms, Pryor’s comments on being the award’s
inaugural recipient directly addressed not only the ideological and pedagogical
directives in his humor but also the role of humor in life: “It is nice to be
regarded on par with a great white man—now that’s funny! Seriously, though,
[the] two things people, throughout history, have had in common are hatred and
humor. I am proud that, like Mark Twain, I have been able to use humor to
lessen people’s hatred.”100
Pryor revealed the key element to his comedy in a 2004 interview: “[Be]
truthful, always truthful and funny will come.” When in its stand-up mode,
Pryor’s comic persona (even when not completely forthcoming) resounded
with humor that felt candid and real as it voiced multiple lived experiences and
multiple articulations of blackness. His comedic discourse resonated with audiences across lines of class and color. Pryor’s inability to tone down his comedy
to be in step with the slowly changing comedic sensibilities of prime-time network television illustrated the wickedly funny and uncompromising nature of
his stand-up persona—as well as, one would think, the difficulty (if not impossibility) of taking it from stage to any screen.Yet that transition did take place.
Onstage, the genius of Pryor’s comic persona is easily discernible in the wedding of dissonant strains of sociopolitical discourse in his voices (his own and
those of his myriad characters) at play with and against stereotypical constructions of blackness, with and against normative notions of both class and race and
with and against delimited notions of “acceptable” topics and content for comic
commentary. On the circuitous trek to the big screen and mainstream Hollywood film comedy, some of his “truth” got lost on the way.
Movin’ On Up? Civil Rights Era
Comics and Cinematic Cro ssove r
The stand-up iteration of the comedian’s voice is the articulation of the
core of his or her comic persona. One must discern, however, the ways in which
that voice is mobilized within a variety of media in order to understand the
place of the black comic persona in American popular culture. Once the passage onto mainstream stages was secured for these civil rights era comics, the
sojourn from stage to small screen followed relatively direct paths. Although the
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variety show and late-night talk shows provided the entrée to American homes
via the electronic hearth (Gregory went from The Playboy Club to Jack Paar,
Cosby [and later Wilson] from the Village Gate to The Tonight Show, Pryor from
The Bitter End to Kraft Music Hall), the transition into Hollywood film proved
a more arduous endeavor. In solely industrial terms Pryor and Cosby were the
most successful of the comics who came of age in the civil rights era, having
gained access and success in multiple segments of mainstream media. Ironically,
only one of them would actually become a movie star—the comic deemed not
ready for prime time, Richard Pryor.
That is not to say that Dick Gregory and Flip Wilson never ventured onto
the big screen. There was, however, for Gregory, almost a thirty-year gap
between his dramatic film roles as Richie “Eagle” Coles, a gifted and selfdestructive jazz saxophonist in the independent Sweet Love, Bitter (1967), loosely
based on the last years of Charlie Parker, and his role as local minister, the Reverend Slocum, in Mario Van Peebles’s epic recounting the early years of the
black nationalist group, Panther (1995). His nearly half a century as comic,
activist, and author/cultural critic has, however, validated Gregory’s screen presence within the documentary genre—making him an ideal subject for musings
on civil rights, comedy, and popular culture in documentaries such as Eyes on
the Prize II (1990), Mo’ Funny: Black Comedy in America (1993), and The N-Word
(2004). His comedic roles, on the big and small screen, are both few and curious: a bit part as minegar, wise, and wary washroom attendant in the 2002 Rob
Schneider vehicle The Hot Chick (2002), and several spots on Comedy Central’s
irreverent COPS parody, Reno 911 (2003), as a blind panhandler.101
Wilson maintained that television was always his medium of choice and his
filmography reflects the preference. His first screen role, a cameo in Uptown
Saturday Night (1974), allowed the comic to play a role taken directly from his
stable of characters (a shady preacher) in a moderately successful black comedy
(starring Cosby and with an appearance by Pryor). His two other screen outings—as the beleaguered coach of a struggling basketball team that “turns it
around” by using astrology in The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (1979) or in the
homage to the wonderful world of roller disco in Skatetown, USA (also 1979) as
Harvey Ross, the lecherous club owner, who is blackmailed into fixing “the big
contest” to keep his wife, Mama (also played by Wilson), from discovering his
“skirt-chasing”—did little for Wilson’s post–variety show career. Curiously, by
the end of the decade Wilson’s comic personae, which had been welcomed into
American homes so readily in the early seventies, could find no amenable or
comfortable fit on either the big screen or small. One might hypothesize that
in a different era Wilson’s characters (or at least his ability to do multiple characters) might have been utilized on the big screen, thus parlaying his television
popularity into a big-screen career in the same way that Martin Lawrence was
able to do in Big Momma’s House or Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor. As
previously stated, neither Wilson’s comic persona nor the old Chitlin’ Circuit
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flavor—the (fundamentally) depoliticized cultural specificity and the G-rated
(or, at worst, PG-rated) comic content of his comedy—had a place in the eighties, when Cosby was king on television and Eddie Murphy gave new meaning
to what it meant when comedy was raw.
Both Pryor and Cosby began making their transition to the big screen in
the late sixties and early seventies, a time when cinematic representations of
growing black consciousness were still a tough sell in Hollywood, particularly
in comedy. In the late sixties,African American comedies still struggled with the
conflicting ideologically rooted comedic impulses—one informed by minstrelsy
and an Amos ’n’Andy brand of humor and the other presenting a more “enlightened” view of black life.102 In the seventies the same struggles between notions
of “ideal” and idealized and stereotypical black comedic representation still
existed, which resulted in films that “required black directors and black screenwriters . . . , like the black minstrel performer in blackface, [to] enable [the] naturalization, validation and repetition of minstrelsy in the postmodern age.”103
Despite black directors’ and screenwriters’ (slightly) increased presence in
Hollywood, the tropes of minstrelsy persisted, and the question of where black
comedians “belonged” remained uncertain.
Among the most successful humorous black films of the era were
action/caper comedies that were situated in fundamentally African American
milieus but that did not necessarily confront the realities of black urban life. In
the recession years of the seventies, films like Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie
Davis, 1970) (the adventures of two Harlem detectives who uncover a crooked
back-to-Africa scheme organized by a black preacher) and Uptown Saturday
Night (Sidney Poitier, 1974).The latter features Poitier and Cosby as two working guys who go to extraordinary measures to recover their winning lottery
ticket stolen during an after-hours nightclub holdup. The film, in which both
Pryor and Wilson had small roles (as a shaky paranoid private eye and a cinematic version of the Reverend Leroy, respectively), exemplified a slice of black
life without interrogating the sociopolitical contexts in which the narratives
were situated. Mark Reid asserts that “the popularity of both Cotton and Uptown
reflects the pastiche quality of hybrid minstrel films insofar as they mimic a dead
humor without social or political intent.”104 While clearly these films did not
emerge as star vehicles for premier black comics (in terms of crossover success),
they did allow black screenwriters and directors to articulate humor in a black
urban vernacular that had not previously found its way onto the big screen
without certain encoded bias based on class, color, and culture.These films presented neither the stories of the Super Negroes of the sixties nor the Super
Niggers of seventies blaxploitation—although in terms of kinship they are
closer to the latter than the former. Although black audiences understood and,
in many cases, embraced these slice-of-urban-life/caper comedic constructions—within which the struggles of working black everyfolk were shown—the
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box office success of these films was limited, as were the benefits to their black
stars’ careers.
It is interesting that Cosby’s roles in Uptown and its sequel, Let’s Do It Again,
do not mirror the comic persona of “Coz.” In “Wardell Franklin,” the angling
everyman willing to compromise his principles to get his piece of the fiscal pie,
Cosby creates an iteration of his comic persona more closely akin to a cynical,
working-class Chet Kincaid (The Bill Cosby Show) than the likable, Anglofriendly everyman. Cosby’s comic shtick (gestures, facial expressions, intonation)
is performed, but his universalist take on life is notably absent. The film represents a milieu rooted in cultural specificity of a black urban working-class
world.105 Onscreen, whether big or small, it would take the better part of two
decades for Cosby’s comic persona to be seen within a working-class milieu.106
For Cosby big-screen success has been as scarce as small-screen success has
been plentiful. Films like Ghost Dad (1990) and Leonard, Part 6 (1987) attempted
to capitalize on the televisualized Coz persona as an overworked patriarch spirit
(a harried widower Cliff Huxtable) and the retired secret agent (who was
notably much less capable than Cosby’s Alexander Scott) with results that
proved to be box office poison.107 While Cosby’s stand-up, his “break-though”
television roles, and his work as a humorist—and even his stint as Jell-O pitchman extraordinaire—have made him a sort of mainstream comedic icon and a
recipient of Kennedy Center Honors, the big screen was one of the few communication media that did not wholeheartedly embrace him. Due at least in
part to the fact that Bill Cosby enjoys the distinction of being one of the few
African American stars to be welcomed into American homes for over four
decades, both his humor and his persona are fundamentally televisual phenomena.Thus, by consistently providing variable and yet familiar portraits of “positivity” (from I-Spy’s premiere in 1965 to Cosby’s series finale in 2000), Cosby
attained sovereignty in the color-blind televisual domestic milieu, which, in
turn, positioned him as the icon of the electronic hearth, the domestic medium.
It seems that a consequence of gaining this high degree of familiarity, intimacy,
and prominence in television was that, unless they were going to see him perform live, audiences were unwilling to go out for a dose of Bill Cosby.
The unyielding nature of Pryor’s stand-up did not easily transfer onto the
big screen either. By the early seventies, Pryor’s extratextual activities, as well as
his emerging “crazy nigger” persona, had labeled him both “controversial” and
“unpredictable”—two qualities that did not necessarily mesh with big-budget
Hollywood films. Some of these film and television roles acted as teasers for the
characters in Pryor’s comedic stable, like the fast-talking hustling sidekick, Slim,
in the quintessential “pimp” movie, The Mack (1973), and the slick and shady
Daddy Rich in Car Wash (1976). Others spoke to the bifurcation of Pryor’s
comic personae (Silver Streak, 1976), and still others seem like inane examples
of the medium’s utilizing vestiges of the comic’s persona while ignoring his
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essential voice. Director Mel Brooks had desperately wanted Pryor to costar
with Gene Wilder in the classic western parody Blazing Saddles (1975), a film on
which Pryor had already worked as a writer. According to Brooks, “every studio in town” passed on the film with Pryor as the lead. One might assume that
the role of Black Bart, the black sheriff (which Brooks had written for Pryor),
would be a star-making turn, but such was not the case for Cleavon Little, the
stage actor who was eventually cast in the role. Little’s leading-man good looks
and the intellectual (and sexual) prowess built into the construction of Bart produced something that had not been seen onscreen—an African American
romantic lead in a mainstream Hollywood comedy (albeit a Mel Brooks comedy).108 Although Little provided a fine comedic performance as Bart, the mind
boggles at the comic possibilities with Pryor in the role.That Pryor was deemed
unacceptable for a part that was virtually tailor-made for him reveals how his
comic persona was viewed as too volatile, too contentious, and too unruly for
the cinematic mainstream without strict narrative limitations to contain his
comedic discourse.
Over the course of Pryor’s career he appeared in more than thirty films,
some of which allowed him to use both his dramatic skills, like his turn as the
piano man addict in Lady Sings the Blues (1972) and the seriocomic turn as a
Vietnam veteran returning home from a prisoner of war camp in Some Kind of
Hero (1982). Films like Blue Collar (1978) and Bustin’ Loose (1981) incorporated
Pryor’s comic persona in social comedies that dealt with the actual lived experience of urban blacks, but these had limited audience outside of the black
community (and die-hard fans of the comic). However, despite the success of
his concert films, Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982) and Richard Pryor:
Here and Now (1983), and numerous made-for-television stand-up specials like
Richard Pryor: Live and Smokin’ (1985), only his costarring comedic roles (those
imbued with diluted doses of the Pryor stand-up persona) proved to be crossover friendly and spelled box office success.
Both Silver Streak (1976) and Stir Crazy (1980) paired Pryor with Gene
Wilder and gave birth to the interracial buddy partnerships of the eighties and
nineties in the humor-tinged action films exemplified by the Lethal Weapon
series starring Danny Glover and Mel Gibson. In both these Pryor/Wilder films
(as well as in the last two iterations of the pairing that seemed to exhaust the
team’s comic potential, 1989’s See No Evil, Hear No Evil and 1991’s Another You),
the stereotypical performances of blackness are utilized less in the service of critique than in a reiteration of minstrelsy. In both films, but particularly in Silver
Streak, Pryor, as strictly comic counterpoint to Wilder’s more romanticized
comic lead, gives instruction on performing blackness as a means of disguise.
The scene culminates with Gene Wilder in blackface (unconvincingly) strutting
and doing “brother-speak.” (This same scene is virtually replicated in Stir Crazy,
where the biracial buddy film goes to prison.) As Ed Guerrero notes, this
teaching-blackness sequence “turns out to be a comic interpretation of black
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8. Pryor teaches Blackness 101. Silver Streak (1976). Directed by Arthur Hiller. Gene
Wilder (left, as George Caldwell) and Richard Pryor (as Grover Muldoon). Photo from
Photofest. Reproduced with permission from 20th Century Fox.
urban ‘cool’ and ‘toughness’” which would have been deemed offensive if not
for the “mediating presence of Pryor.”109 Pryor’s persona lends a sense of blacksanctioned credibility to the scene that served to assuage the possible anger of
black audiences—over seeing a black man teach a form of urban minstrelsy—
and the liberal guilt of white audiences—over laughing at seeing a white man
performing this urban minstrelsy . . . badly.
The clear bifurcation of Pryor’s comic persona can be seen when one considers that in the same years that he was shining on stage in Live at the Sunset
Strip and (perhaps a bit less brightly) in Here and Now, he was also making films
in which his characters came perilously close to “cooning” in both The Toy
(1982) and Superman III (1983).110 In The Toy, a remake of a French film by the
same name, aside from the fact that the film depended on broad physical comedy (often with Pryor running and looking scared) and a premise that in and of
itself seems offensive (the central element being that a white southerner buys a
black man as a toy for his child), one can only assume that the opportunity to
work with comic star Jackie Gleason and a salary that would continue to support Pryor’s self-destructive lifestyle were his motivations. The same could be
said of his role as the down-on-his-luck dishwasher turned computer whiz sidekick for the supervillain in Superman III (1983). In his autobiography Pryor
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stated candidly,“It was a piece of shit. But the producers offered me $4 million,
more than any black actor had ever been paid. ‘For a piece of shit,’ I told my
agent when I finally read the script,‘it smells sweet.’”111 While one might argue
that Pryor’s personal struggles had as much to do with the uneven translation of
the comic’s persona to the big screen as industrial prohibitions, one must again
consider how his attempts to complicate his cinematic construction were
received.
Penned by Pryor, along with Paul Mooney and Rocco Urbisci, Jo Jo Dancer,
Your Life Is Calling (1986) was the biggest project from the comic’s Indigo Films
production company, part of a $40 million deal with Columbia Pictures.112
As star, writer, and director, Pryor tells the story of the rise and near demise of
Jo Jo Dancer, “a performer raised in a brothel, [who] discovers his own comic
style in seedy nightclubs and goes on to achieve Hollywood stardom and comes
close to being fatally consumed by his cocaine addiction.”113 At the time of the
film’s release Pryor maintained that it was only loosely autobiographical, and
according to critics it lacked “a satisfactory explanation of how an ambitious,
naïve young comic from the Midwest becomes a bitter, paranoid self destructive, drug addict.”114 In the film, a cousin to Bob Fosse’s surrealistic autobiographical musical All That Jazz (1979), and the fictionalized biography of Lenny
Bruce, Lenny (1974), the spirit of the horribly burned Pryor/Dancer emerges
from his body to search his past for a reason to live and, in the end, chooses life.
While the film’s moral is life affirming, its harrowing elements—particularly in
relationship to the addiction—recount aspects of the public Pryor and are
directed, as New York Times critic Vincent Canby stated, “with more élan than
one has the right to expect of a first time director.”115
The mantle of the creative tri-hyphenate (writer-producer-star) is often
staggering for any artist, and one might assert that the weighty responsibility
coupled with the complexity of Pryor’s story predestined Jo Jo Dancer for accusations of either naiveté or disingenuousness in translating the comic’s life to
the screen. On one hand, one might agree with Washington Post critic Paul
Attanasio’s contentions: “In Jo Jo Dancer, he worships the meekness in himself. .
. . There’s something lovely about that (that’s where his gentle empathy comes
from) but there’s something dishonest as well.There is, presumably, another side
to Pryor—in fact, we’ve seen it, in the anger behind his early stand-up work.”116
On the other hand, regardless of the deficiencies in either the script or character construction, one may also wonder whether, in this case, it was the strength
of the wild, unrelenting, and volatile aspects of his humor that made it impossible for critics—and audiences—to embrace a performance that tried to intertwine the stand-up and cinematic iterations of Pryor’s comic persona. The
criticism of the film focuses not on problems with Pryor’s construction of a
comic persona but on his construction of the comic. It seems to speak to some
sort of de facto prohibition in terms of what Pryor, as a comic—a black
comic—is allowed to do on the big screen and whether allowing the gaps and
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fissures between the stand-up persona and lived experience can be given cinematic space. If, indeed, the comic persona exists as the performance of the intersection of multiple ideologies and lived experiences, Jo Jo Dancer is a significant
film for its failures and successes.Whether by default or by design, the wedding
of pathos and edgy irreverence, an inherent part of Pryor’s stand-up, makes only
fleeting appearances in Hollywood comedies.
For both Wilson and Gregory the big screen would never be a vehicle for
the dissemination of their comedic discourse, and although Cosby and Pryor
both found their way into mainstream comedy, each experiences successes and
failures that spoke to the suitability of the black comic persona to American film
comedy. The process of making the “crazy nigger” assimilable into mainstream
comedy and the difficulty for the fully assimilable Cosby comic persona to
transfer from television to film raise significant questions about the place of the
African American comedian in screen comedy. One might argue that a dual
burden is always placed on the comedian as he transfers from stand-up to
screen: he must find a way to retain the essence of his stand-up persona while
also conforming to the generic limitations of Hollywood comedy. This
quandary is further problematized for the black comedian inasmuch as this
process of transition from stand-up to television to film—that is, the negotiation of racial, class, and gender identities, as well as the possible containment of
the more unruly (read controversial) aspects of the comic personae—makes a
significant contribution to the way that African Americans are viewed at home
and abroad. Carrying the burden of his own race, as well as the burden of representing the race, undoubtedly inflects the way the black comedian has been
integrated into mainstream Hollywood comedy. Although Gregory, Cosby,
Wilson, and Pryor had all established themselves as comedic forces in the standup world, to make it in Hollywood film comedy, their performance of black
identity and cultural specificity had to be contained and sanitized.
Gregory, whose political activism eventually led him to abandon stand-up’s
microphone for the lecturer’s podium, turned down numerous film opportunities early in his career based on disputes about black representation. Cosby, who
has come to personify the image of the universalist African American humorist,
has been able to supply a positivist, integrationist image of the “buppie” (black
urban professionals) home front, happily consumed in the domestic space and
internalized by mainstream audiences as the exception and the rule for the
quality of black life in urban/suburban America. Why has Cosby failed on the
big screen? Comedy more often than not reaffirms the status quo, so one must
consider whether the positivist imaginings of a fully assimilated black man on
the small screen provides comfort while the same image on the big screen might
be seen as a threat to that status quo. Furthermore, Cosby’s attempts to embody
a less “Super” construction of blackness have been met with a certain degree of
indifference. While finding a niche is essential for the comic/comedic actor’s
success, the reaction of both the audience and the industry to his or her
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breaking out of that mold is often as fierce as it is capricious. Wilson’s genuine
amenability to audiences allowed him, like Cosby, to cross into home spaces
with ease, but it did not afford him the ability to grow beyond the comic character types for which he had become beloved. In many ways Pryor’s compartmentalization of his stand-up and screen persona may be seen as supplying most
directly the template that has been adopted and adapted by comedians like
Eddie Murphy,Whoopi Goldberg, and, to a lesser degree, Chris Rock. One cannot dismiss the powerful sway the possibility that iconic status like Cosby’s can
have over any performer, regardless of race, gender, or pedagogy.
The comedian/comedic actor has to do a dance between the uncompromising (sometimes vulgar) stand-up persona—with all its personal, sociopolitical,
and historical baggage—and the screen persona, a construct that is constantly
being retooled, reframed, and reenvisioned from multiple industrial sources, as
well as from the comedian turned comic actor him- or herself. Pryor was particularly adept at this dance, and, in terms of his stand-up persona, the culturally
specific aspects of his humor remained undiluted. The rest of this book is dedicated to interrogating the nature and necessity of the dance in new and variable
comic venues (televisual, theatrical, and cinematic) by the next generation of
black comedians, exemplified by Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock.
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Chap te r 2
Murphy and Rock
From the “Black Guy”
to the “Rock Star”
Chris Rock’s breakthrough Home Box Office special,
Bring the Pain (1998), begins by invoking a personal canon of stand-up comedians. “Ladies and Gentlemen, are you ready to bring the pain? Give up the love
for Mr. CHRIS ROCK!”The sound of pandemonium accompanies a medium
close-up of Rock’s black-and-white leather shoes as he swaggers toward the
stage. A series of comedy album covers is then superimposed over his strut,
including Bill Cosby’s To Russell, My Brother,Whom I Slept With, Dick Gregory’s
In Living Black and White, Richard Pryor’s Is It Something I Said?, Steve Martin’s
Comedy Isn’t Pretty, and self-titled albums from Woody Allen and Eddie Murphy.
The sequence provides both a historical context within which Rock would
have the audience view his comedy and a genealogy of comedians who have
stepped out from behind the mike to ply their wares as comedic actors. Just as
the personae and careers of Gregory, Cosby, Flip Wilson, and Pryor can be seen
as emblematic of both the possibilities and pitfalls for black comics who came
of age during the civil rights movement, Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock represent the first and second waves of black comedians in the post–civil rights era,
respectively.1 While both the roots of their comedy and the routes of their
careers might differ from those of their civil rights era brethren, many of the
quandaries remain the same: how to cross over to the mainstream promised land
and, if indeed that is possible, how to retain their point of annunciation, voice,
and comedic pedagogy on that arduous trek.
“The Black Guy” No More:
The Eme rge nce of Eddie
Historically, the comedians of the pre–civil rights era—the comic forbears
of Gregory and Cosby—generally passed through the Chitlin’ Circuit before
they could access the white comic venues that filtered the “talent” into the
entertainment mainstream. By the eighties there were two frequently intersecting roads for stand-ups of all colors into American film comedy—one through
Saturday Night Live (SNL, 1975– ), the other through comedy programming on
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HBO. Although the first era of SNL can be hailed as cutting-edge television
humor, it was not a place for black comics to shine. Over three decades the
“black guy” (or girl) on SNL has often been an underutilized player whose
screen time is minimal and whose characters are ancillary to another player’s
central role (from Garrett Morris’s “Chico Escuela” on Chevy Chase’s “Weekend Update” to Tim Meadows’s lampooning of Oprah Winfrey). Eddie Murphy
was the notable exception to the “black guy syndrome.” Before the end of his
freshman season (1980–81) on SNL, Murphy was a major presence. In fact,
Murphy’s recurring characters (the grownup Buckwheat as a post–Little Rascals
celebrity; a Borscht Belt, cigar-chomping version of Gumby; and Mr. Robinson, the Mister Rogers of the ’hood) ended SNL’s first comic slump era in the
early eighties. By the time Murphy left the series in 1984, he was already a bona
fide crossover star on stand-up’s main stage—an act captured in Eddie Murphy
Delirious (1983)—and was well on his way to big-screen superstardom with 48
Hrs (1982) and Trading Places (1983).
Clad in the type of red-and-black leather suit that he would later lampoon
as Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Eddie Murphy prowled the stage in
Delirious with all the swagger of a stand-up virtuoso turned sex symbol.
Parading a new sort of audaciousness, Murphy’s routines utilized the blue tone
of Pryor (particularly in terms of language and sexually explicit content) while
excising Pryor’s sociopolitical edge. Murphy’s stories of family and childhood
are jadedly nostalgic but touch on issues of race and class in uncritical terms.
Murphy’s kid routines are not “cleaned up” idealizations of childhood like
Cosby’s material, nor are they intended to be points of departure for Pryoresque
social commentary on black life. Murphy’s ice cream routine begins with the
joyous moments a child spends with his freshly scooped cone:
You don’t eat your ice cream for, like, a half-hour, you’d be dancin’ around
singing, “I have some ice cream, I have some ice cream. And I’m gonna eat
it all . . . eat it all” . . . (The joyous song transforms into a musical taunt
directed at “that one kid on the side who didn’t get no ice cream”). Kids
didn’t give a fuck, they’d say, “You didn’t get no ice cream.You didn’t get
none . . . you didn’t get none.You didn’t get none cuz you are on the welfare and can’t afford it, you can’t afford.You can’t afford it” . . . all the other
kids are chiming in, “he can’t afford it.”
While it may not provide an incisive commentary on black urban life, this brief
example of kid cruelty touches on stereotypes about the African American
community while providing a view of black child life that has almost no relationship to the collectivity of Fat Albert and the Gang. These kid stories lack
the “feel-good” payoff of Cosby’s work. Instead, the comic tone of Murphy’s
routines reflect the same ethos as his adult material: insolent, idiosyncratic, and,
ultimately, self-interested.While, arguably, Murphy’s kid “bits” supply humorous
“black-on-black” social commentary, they are not placed within a larger (and
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more complicated) sociopolitical context for his crossover audiences. Without
this contextualization the critical bite of Murphy’s routines is lessened, if not
lost altogether—as is the possibility that they might threaten white audiences.
The Buckwheat routine exemplifies that when Murphy did engage with
representations of African Americans in popular culture, his impressions were
encased in routines that only halfheartedly confronted the media mechanisms
that perpetuated minstrel archetypes:
I was standing outside getting ready to come in here and this little Jewish
guy came up to me and said, “Hey, Buckwheat.” There was some brothers
standing next to me and they said,“What did that guy call you, man? Buckwheat?” Then I started thinking about the Little Rascals—period. Who the
fuck thought up the names on that show? Because I am from a predominantly black family and I have yet to run into a relative named Buckwheat.
Go to a cookout and say, “Hi, my name is Ed. What’s yours?” “I’m Buckwheat, man. Yeah Buckwheat, that’s my name. No, Buckwheat. I ain’t got
no last name—Buckwheat, that’s it. . . . Don’t believe me? Ain’t that right,
Stymie? . . . I want you to meet my brother.Yo, Farina! [pause] Buckwheat
and Farina . . .You know how most people are named after their fathers, we
was named after our father’s favorite breakfasts.”
The opening of this bit addresses the absurdity of being identified only with a
parody of a pickaninny archetype (Buckwheat), but it soon becomes a riff on
the issue of naming in its most simplistic form. Consequently, it stops short of
actually questioning the ideological agenda informing the representation of
black children in The Little Rascals. Like much of Murphy’s consciously racialized humor, the routine does not endeavor to deconstruct or debunk either
issues of race or racial representation. His pronouncements are rooted more in
cynical banter than in social criticism.
The uninhibited bravado of Raw (1987), directed by Robert Townsend,
makes his earlier onstage persona seem almost self-effacing by comparison.The
first ten minutes of Raw establish Murphy as rebel and multimedia “rock star.”2
The footage of the multiracial crowd of men and women holding headshots of
Murphy, as well as concert posters, programs, and t-shirts emblazoned with his
leather clad silhouette, reframes the way the stand-up comic is viewed. Murphy
is not the nice, funny guy in the suit (Cosby) or the irreverent young man on
the fringes of society (Pryor); he is the young Elvis as stand-up—a comic sex
symbol. Murphy’s comic persona in Raw served the same role for the second
wave of post–civil rights era black comics (including Chris Tucker, Martin
Lawrence, and Rock) that Richard Pryor’s Live in Concert (1979) had for
Murphy himself: it established a new comic paradigm.
Like Pryor, the irreverence at the core of Murphy’s humor seemed to capture the imagination of young audiences across lines of race and class.3 Whereas
Pryor had managed to push the boundaries of good taste while maintaining his
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status as an “equal-opportunity offender,” Murphy revels in taking a particularly
adversarial stance toward women, whom he casts as predators looking “to get
half of what’s mine,” and gays, whom he fears may be “taking too long a look”
at his physical attributes. His heterosexist attitudes permeate his stand-up (providing some of its most sexually explicit material)—whether in his re-visioning
of The Honeymooner’s Ralph and Norton’s sexual preferences in Delirious, or his
recounting stories in Raw of the “24-hour homo-watch” that is on the lookout
for him across the country. This analysis of Murphy’s stand-up, while only
touching on the openly homophobic content in his act (also present in the acts
of “shock” comedians like Andrew “Dice” Clay and Sam Kinison), illustrates
how the content of even the most controversial stand-up comic responds to
popular sensibilities. The blatant heterosexism of Murphy’s act, which played
easily in that era’s contemporary comic mainstream, would not play as well in
the post–Birdcage, post–In and Out, post–Will and Grace new millennial comic
milieu, which is decidedly more gay friendly. However, perhaps more significantly for the purposes of this study, the vehement antigay sentiments of
Murphy’s stand-up persona replicate the strains of homophobia in the black
community (a notion rooted in the questionable connection between homosexuality and centuries of actual and virtual emasculation, and, a Leviticusinformed antigay dogma for certain segments of Christianity).
One might argue that in order to be considered “daring,” the stand-up
comic’s persona, informed by Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and, of course,
Richard Pryor, must embody a challenge to popular sensibilities (read the status
quo).The sexual politics of Murphy’s stand-up does challenge the status quo—
but it reaffirms it as well by reasserting black masculinity through the degradation of black women (and women, in general) and annunciating the beginnings
of a backlash against feminism. In Murphy’s 1987 stand-up act depicted in Raw,
his persona of comic as rock star reduces complex questions of performing
black masculinity (why black men have to act like they can fight), gender equity
in relationships (how sex is a weapon for men and a commodity for women),
and the justification for infidelity (how sexual conquest is male manifest destiny) to a simple catchphrase: “it’s a dick thing.”This de facto mantra for much
of Raw treads on that slippery slope between comedic sexism and misogynistic
comedy—neither of which is easily justifiable. The phrase also resonates with
the assertion made by bell hooks—first in her essay “Reconstructing Black
Masculinity” and later in Marlon Riggs’s cinematic rumination on identity,
Black Is . . . Black Ain’t (1995): “If the ‘black thing’ i.e., black liberation struggle,
is only a ‘dick thing’ in disguise, a phallocentric play for black male power, then
black people are in serious trouble.”4 One might bemoan the inherent regressiveness of Murphy’s articulation of gender identity, in which the black male is
judged by a quantifiable measure of sexual power (the figurative and literal
measure of the man) and women are referenced in primarily anatomical terms
(pussy being the favorite); however, what is perhaps more disconcerting is how
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it seems to respond to other sociopolitical discourse about the place of black
women in particular and women in general. There is an unsettling kinship
between the infamous assertion made by Stokely Carmichael (Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee/Black Panthers), that “the place of women in
the movement was prone,” and Murphy’s explanation of why women will put
up with bad treatment from men once they have been made to “cum hard.”
While mobilized differently in these two instances, the notion of black masculine identity rooted in a phallocentric articulation of traditional gender roles—
inherent in both Murphy and Carmichael’s statements—still holds powerful
sway in black popular culture. By being one of the first black comics to directly
vocalize this standpoint (without critique or social comment), Murphy’s standup persona defines an ideological paradigm for comedic discourse about sexual
politics—in terms of both gender and sexuality—that has been embraced by the
male and female comics of the Def Jam generation.
Given that the articulation of identity is as significant to this study as the
black comic’s espoused ideologies, one of the most interesting moments in Raw
provides both: the routine that centers on the battle between Cosby and Pryor
for Murphy’s comic “soul.” Although it begins simply as an opportunity for
Murphy to reveal his mimicry skills, this routine transforms into a blanket
indictment of Cosby (for his “outmoded” views regarding what a comic can or
cannot say) and a quasi-canonization of Pryor (for his “proselytizing” of outrageous curse-laden humor). In the routine Murphy recalls being excited about
receiving a call from Bill, but the excitement turns to anger as Cosby chastises
him:“[As Cosby] ‘You cannot say filth, flarn, flarn, flarn, filth in front of people.
. . . I can’t use the same language that you do but you know what I mean when
I say flarn, flarn, flarn, filth.’ [As himself] ‘I never said no filth, flarn, filth. I don’t
know what you’re talking about. I’m offended that you called. Fuck You.’ . . .
That’s when I got mad, he thought that was my whole act—that I cursed and
left.” A stream of obscenities follows, culminating with “Goodnight everybody—suck my dick.” Murphy then turns to Pryor for guidance:“Richard says,
‘Next time the motherfucker calls tell him I said he can suck my dick. . . . Tell
Bill to have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.’”This bit thus serves both
to sever and to establish ties with Murphy’s black comedic forefathers.The skillfulness of imitations aside, the discourse surrounding “appropriate” black humor
plays out in fairly superficial terms. Cosby is cast as a dinosaur, out of touch with
the “current” edgy and outrageous humor that Murphy traces back to Pryor.
Yet even as Murphy attempts to position himself as a sort of heir apparent
to Pryor, the linkage seems weak because the kinship is based more on style
than substance. As Donald Bogle puts it, “It was apparent that Murphy was
influenced by Pryor. It was apparent also that he had never understood Pryor’s
work. For Pryor had gotten inside his winos, junkies or numbers runners,
uncovering their vulnerabilities, their troubled histories, and revealing at times
their sadness and touching beauty. Murphy, however, seemed to see his various
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9. Eddie Murphy does his best Cosby in Eddie Murphy Raw (1987). Directed by Robert
Townsend.
characters as lowlife characters without any innate dignity. . . . And obviously
missing from his television skits were the social/political concerns of a Dick
Gregory.”5 A sort of “I got mine” ethos informs Murphy’s comedy and its apolitical production of black identity. In a New York Times article on “bad boy”
comedians of the Reagan era (both black and white), Stephen Holden defined
Murphy’s stand-up—in which he curses, mocks, and rages without any clear
sociopolitical or intellectual agenda—as “the perfect symbol of post-hip, survival
of the fittest humor.”6
Although the word audacious is an apt description of Murphy’s stand-up
comedic persona, his televisual iteration, for the most part, lacked the sociopolitical bark and bite of either Pryor or Gregory. From Velvet Jones’s guide to
pimping to Mr. Robinson’s adventures in his whack neighborhood, Murphy’s
SNL characters, while undoubtedly funny, provided caricatures of specific segments of black life without providing sociohistorical contextualization. In other
words, his Buckwheat might have been a “player,” but, in the end, he was still
Buckwheat—a pickaninny with some degree of agency still remains the
embodiment of a minstrel trope. Even the character of Tyrone Green, the prison
poet, which appeared to be inspired by Pryor’s misspeaking black nationalist,
was presented in a stylized but uncritical filmed segment,“Prose and Cons.” Performed with mock menace by Murphy, the portrayal of Green seemed a missed
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opportunity for critique; like the character’s poem,“C-I-L-L, my Landlord,” the
sketch ultimately made the incarcerated black male’s attempt at self-expression
a laughable endeavor. One cannot discount Murphy’s comedic brilliance—as a
mimic, as a quick-witted observational humorist, as an African American comic
who takes control of mediated tropes of race and ethnicity for his own comedic
purposes; however, his comic persona on SNL, which seemed to be constructed
in opposition to positivist constructions of black comedy (like The Cosby Show),
failed to provide an ideological alternative more complicated than “more power
to me.”
In a retrospective on the comic for Salon.com, Michael Sragow asserted that
Murphy “specialized less in rage than in effrontery.”7 Nevertheless, Murphy’s
very existence, as a very successful, very young black man, who embraced both
(seeming) industrial autonomy and international celebrity, provided a new generation with a comic hero who embodied the sociopolitical moment. In many
ways, Murphy was the first “successful” post-soul comic. His comic persona was
informed as much by the “I’m Black and I’m Proud” style—if not the substance—of the black power movement as the media images of black subjugation
(the continued proliferation of minstrel archetypes embodied by Stymie, Buckwheat, and Farina in The Little Rascals to those in ghetto sitcoms like J. J. in Good
Times or Re-Run in What’s Happening) and black idealization (the Super
Negroes of the sixties in Julia and I-Spy). Murphy presented black humor for
media babies—across lines of race, class, and color.Yet one might argue that by
failing to engage in direct sociocultural critique, Murphy’s comic persona
rebelled against one form of containment while engaging in an unproblematized standoff with another. As the unqualified star of the show in his SNL days,
Murphy brought black humor and sensibility to a series in which it had previously only played an ancillary role. The first African American comic of the
post-soul era to gain rock-star status, Murphy inspired a generation of young
black comics. Nonetheless, his stardom was a product of the eighties—a time
when progressive and regressive representations of blackness were intertwined
in the rhetoric of Reagan America. In the days of trickle-down, greed-is-good,
aspirations to yuppiedom, truly contentious sociocultural critique did not play
well in mainstream popular culture. However, there were moments of rupture
that provide gaps and fissures in what might be seen as hegemonic comic sensibility—particularly in relationship to race relations. From a new millennial
perspective these moments may seem somewhat innocuous, but their resonance
is undeniable. Like the “Word Association” between Chase and Pryor, the ideological work done with Murphy’s short film, “White like Me” provided a
problematic televisual text that engaged popular conceptions about the experience of blackness by calling into question the experience of whiteness.
The filmed segment, which was arguably Murphy’s most overtly political
televisual segment on SNL, aired December 15, 1984, on an episode hosted by
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Murphy a year after he had left the late-night series. The segment begins with
Murphy, dressed completely in black (shirt, pants, and leather jacket) walking
down what appeared to be the white corridor of the television studio. Speaking directly into the camera, Murphy states: “You know, a lot of people talk
about racial prejudice. And some people have gone so far as to say that there are
actually two Americas: one black and one white. But talk is cheap. So I decided
to look into the problem myself, firsthand. To go underground and actually
experience America: as a white man.” Murphy enters the studio makeup room
and is transformed into “Mr. White” complete with slightly feathered brown
wig and mustache, which, Murphy states, is reminiscent of seventies porn star
Harry Reems—and, of course, “white face.” His “training sequence,” which
included reading Hallmark cards and watching episodes of Dynasty, foreshadows
a plethora of “white people be like” jokes; it also confronts (and confirms) longheld assumptions about white privilege.When he emerges, charcoal gray threepiece suit and glasses with briefcase in hand, he seems both the eighties version
of the “Organization Man”—an anonymous cog in a corporate wheel—and a
cartoon version of whiteness. From the free newspaper at the convenience store
to the transit bus that is transformed into a mobile party vehicle (after the last
black rider disembarks), the disparities inform Murphy’s revelation: in voiceover
he intones, “The problem was much more serious than I’d ever imagined.”
The final perk of whiteness takes place when a collateral-free “Mr.White”
applies for a loan from a black loan officer. Incredulous over White’s request, the
officer’s unequivocal rejection is cut short by the entrance of a white loan officer, who, albeit nicely, takes over handling Mr. White’s business.
White Loan Officer: [laughs, then sits] That was a close one, wasn’t it?
Eddie Murphy: It certainly was.
White Loan Officer: We don’t have to bother with these formalities, do we,
Mr. White? Huh?
Eddie Murphy: What a silly Negro!
White Loan Officer: Just take what you want, Mr.White. Pay us back anytime.
Or don’t. We don’t care.
Eddie Murphy: Tell me, do you know of any other banks like this in this area?
The segment concludes with Murphy in the makeup room, again speaking
directly to the camera:“So, what did I learn from all of this? Well, I learned that
we still have a very long way to go in this country before all men are truly
equal. But I’ll tell you something.” As he walks across the length of the room,
the camera pulls back to reveal three black men and one black woman applying white makeup to their faces. “I’ve got a lot of friends, and we’ve got a lot
of makeup. So, the next time you’re huggin’ up with some really super, groovy
white guy, or you met a really great, super keen white chick, don’t be too sure.
They might be black.”All of the prospective “whites” wave to the camera.While
some may assert that this final segment asserts a subversive directive, a way to
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“work the system,” if you will, its resonance is somewhat shallow. In an era
when the realities of racial inequity, particularly in relationship to black access
to the era’s financial bounty, which had not managed to trickle down to those
with credit histories that were much more economically viable than Mr.
White’s, the notion of racial masquerade may have very well seemed like the
only option. However, the “solution” in this mockumentary on disparity, while
clearly offered with tongue firmly wedged in cheek, is still rooted in individual
action and initiative. Even this absurdist answer has traces of the notion that if
one only tries “hard enough,” then there are ways to “work the system and win”
making the de facto “losers” a part of the critique as well as the system. In
“White like Me,” working the system is still only for a privileged few—in this
case, “friends of Eddie.” While contradictory ideological impulses are often a
part of comedy, this provides a glimpse of how Murphy’s comic persona, at its
most progressive, is constrained by regressive tendencies in the popular cultural
consciousness. Later examination of the successes and the failures of Murphy’s
film career will reveal how this idiosyncratic approach to the articulation of
blackness corresponds to the Reagan era, when black success and black failure
were framed within a rugged individualist “up by your own bootstraps” construction of the American Dream.
Rock in th e S e cond Wave
The nineties would see Murphy forsaking live performance and the small
screen for the movies. His meteoric rise to stardom through the eighties proved
an inspiration for the second wave of black comedians in both media. Chris
Rock clearly demonstrates such an influence, as well as mining the wealth of
earlier black humor styles presented by Pryor and Gregory. Like Murphy, Rock
began his career as a teenager on the New York club circuit. After seeing the
young Rock do fifteen minutes at New York’s The Comic Strip in 1987,
Murphy secured a place for him on the HBO special Uptown Comedy Express.
This appearance led to Rock’s first screen role, as a parking valet with an attitude at the Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills Cop II (1987). After appearing as
the kid in search of a single rib (a cameo) in Keenen Ivory Wayans’s blaxploitation parody I’m Gonna Get You Sucka! and a rare but affecting dramatic role, as
a crackhead informer in New Jack City, Rock was cast, like Murphy before him,
as “the black guy” on Saturday Night Live. Despite Rock’s insistence that he was
“just happy to be here,” he was one of a succession of underutilized black cast
members to experience minimal screen time and few running characters (the
notable exception being Nat X). Rock’s association with the series allowed him
to branch out as a performer, leading to big-screen supporting roles in such
films as New Jack City (1991). However, his profile for mainstream audiences was
enhanced far more by his post-SNL gigs as pitchman: for example his voicing
of “Lil’ Penny” Hardaway, the Nike puppet or the hostile info guy he did for
1–800-COLLECT.
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On his 1992 comedy record Rock raged against the depiction of African
Americans in popular culture and the real-life consequences of such mediated
assumptions. As the title of the album exclaims, young black men in America
today are “born suspect.” One begins to see the scathing sociocultural critique
in this stand-up set—a discursive set of skills that he also utilizes in Chris Rock:
Big Ass Jokes, his first HBO special. In the early nineties (and, arguably, even
today), the half-hour comedy series often acts as a comic’s televisual audition for
the big break: the hour-long HBO special. Like many of the markers for the
comedian’s performance process—moving from opener to headliner in the
club, to being invited to the couch by Johnny, Jay, or Dave on late night—making the jump from the half-hour comedy special to the hour-long set was a significant marker in terms of creative “heat” and industrial viability. For Rock,
who had never become more than “this year’s black guy” on SNL (a designation he shared with Tim Meadows during his tenure on the series), this marked
a pivotal moment in his career. Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly critic, articulates what many viewers of the short set on HBO in June of 1994 must have
been thinking: “In a crisp 30 minutes, Chris Rock: Big Ass Jokes proves just how
much of comedian Chris Rock’s talent was wasted during his three-season stint
on Saturday Night Live.”8 Watching the twenty-something Rock strut onstage in
Atlanta, to the driving guitar licks that begin Living Color’s “Cult of Personality,” clad in a flowing blue satin shirt with a very early-nineties red, gold, and
black funky paisley, short black vest and modified fade haircut (all of which is a
far cry from the all-black, Calvin Klein hipper-than-thou costuming of the
stand-up to follow), one can see the comic’s intensity. Rock is coming onstage
“to kill,” to use the comic vernacular—and he does. Despite the comic prowess
that the young Rock exhibits, watching Big Ass Jokes feels a bit like watching
home movies of Michael Jordan play street ball at sixteen: the talent is unquestionably there, but the style has not been refined.
Rock immediately launches into material that is meant to shock the audience by its candor and create an atmosphere for his personal brand of sociocultural critique. His rapport with the audience, their shout-outs and his responses,
establishes a conversational tone for the special as he paces back and forth.The
rarely stationary Rock uses the entire lip of the stage to engage the crowd—
whether in the front row or the “nose bleed” seats. Creating this sense of intimacy, regardless of the venue, is vital for a comic like Rock, whose material will,
at some point or another, challenge the sensibilities of the audience: “I cannot
complain. I got my special, doing a new movie, got the TV show. [Patting his
chest] Successful black man. [The crowd cheers] You know what’s next, right?
[He pauses, staring straight into the audience with a huge grin] White girl.
[Giving a sly throaty chuckle] You cannot be a successful black man without a
white girl.”
By using his first joke series to interrogate the notion of interracial dating
as status symbol, a concept to which he returns many times over the course of
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the thirty-minute set, Rock plays with, and against, popular opinions on the
subject espoused within the black community. By exposing the tensions around
interracial dating from an insider’s perspective, Rock may well be airing “dirty
laundry” in a public venue; however, his critique reveals the discursive complexity of the “white girl or white guy” issue. He covers multiple stances on the
issue. By stating that people blame everything that goes wrong in your life on a
dating choice—“Chris got hit by a truck.” “Fucking around with them white
girls . . . that’s what he get”—he touches on the anti-interracial sentiments that
flourish within the black community—particularly in reference to successful
black men—which speaks to larger issues about the fate and the plight of
African American males in contemporary America. On the other hand, his
response to interracial dating when it is a “white guy” reveals a gender politics
that often falls into the regressive camp. Stating incredulously that there are
white girls that only go out with black guys and “sisters” who don’t date black
men, he recounts asking one such woman about her partner choice. The voice
he gives her resonates with both belligerence and ignorance:
Girl, why don’t you date black men?
[As the black woman] No reason. No reason.
No reason?
So I punched her in the face. [Peals of laughter]
Now she’s got a reason. [(The crowd—male and female—howls]
While the violence described for the sake of a punch line is fleeting (and, seemingly, goes unquestioned by the audience), Rock’s gendered double standard
continues as he bemoans black U.S. figure skater Debbie Thomas’s marriage to
a white man. Using his usual pattern of phrase repetition, he beseeches Thomas,
“Debbie, what do I have to do to get with you?” After conceding that she
“probably didn’t meet many brothers on the ice,” he finishes the bit with a
familiar note of condemnation:“Debbie Thomas went to the Olympics and bust
her ass. (As he pauses, he smiles slyly) Fucking around with them white boys—
that’s what she get.”While other examples of sexual politics make their way into
his act, even at the earliest stages of his stand-up career, Rock’s forte was
comedic discourse on race. In fact, he clearly states his point of enunciation in
this set:
I do a lot of racial humor.You know why? I was bused to school when I was
a kid. I had to get up every morning at 6 o’clock in the morning to compete with white kids who didn’t have to get up until 8. And that’s not fair.
Say I get a lower mark on a test, I got a teacher saying, “Chris can’t read.”
I’m like,“No, Chris is fucking tired.”You supposed to get bused to school to
go to better schools in a better neighborhood. I got bused to school in a
poor white neighborhood—a neighborhood worse than the one I lived in.
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. . . Beyond white trash, they were like white toxic waste. . . .They hated me.
They hated my guts because my family had more money than them. . . .
That’s when I learned my lesson, boy, there is nothing that a white man with
a penny hates more than a nigger with a nickel.
This personalized commentary on intersections between race and class, the vestiges of New Society programs (like busing) and the final adage that sounds like
something that, if you’re African American, you might have heard from an elder
relative, enables Rock to use a thirty-minute set as teaching tool.Thus, this joke
series can be seen to function either as an ideological refresher course or as a
primer on the African American condition. Although then, as now, Rock maintained that his primary directive is being funny, the subversive power of his sociocultural critique was present in Big Ass Jokes (without much of the political
edge).
The overtly political spin in Rock’s comedy was further honed and
achieved wider exposure during his stint as a “correspondent” for the 1996
presidential campaign on Comedy Central’s Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.
His sardonic reports from the campaign trail provided a forum for Rock to
meld his stand-up sensibility with an incisive sociopolitical critique that obliged
audiences to laugh even as they squirmed. Rock’s commentary on why Colin
Powell could not run for office (which was retooled for the “Roll with the
New” tour and quoted on his first HBO special) directly confronted white
liberal sensibilities—not allowing the audience off the hook.9 In the conclusion
of her book, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power,
Christine Acham’s discussion of Chris Rock’s position on the televisual landscape cites Malcolm X’s speech, “A Message to the Grassroots,” in which he
gives black people the directive to “stop airing our differences in front of the
white man.”10 Placing the significance of airing the community’s dirty laundry
as “a possible means to divide and conquer” into perspective by exposing the
social and historical ramifications of making the rifts in the black community
visible to the greater American public (namely the division between the civil
rights and black power movements often embodied by Martin Luther King Jr.
versus Malcolm X), Acham asserts that Rock’s Bring the Pain was “one of the
most significant moments of black popular culture to test the bounds of
Malcolm X’s philosophy.”11 Rock’s choice, to unflinchingly tackle whatever he
deems hypocritical or unacceptable—regardless of race, creed, or color—
opened up the discussion of issues reserved for what Acham refers to as “black
communal sites of the Chitlin’ Circuit or the privacy of one’s own home” to the
“very mainstream venue of U.S. cable television.”12
In his first HBO special, Bring the Pain, Rock’s initial verbal assault called
into question the politics (and the logic) of the black leadership: “Washington,
DC . . . Chocolate City.The home of the Million Man March. Had all the positive black leaders there—Farrakhan, Jesse, Marion Barry. How did he even get
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a ticket? It was a day of positivity. Marion Barry at the Million Man March.You
know what that means? That even in our finest hour, we had a crack-head on
stage. [A mixture of laughter and boos] Boo if you want—you know I’m right.”
Rock’s target is not simply Marion Barry, the Mayor of Washington, D.C., who
secured another term in office after a drug addiction scandal because he had
remained (at least politically) in the bosom of the black community. Rock uses
this scenario to critique the kind of unconditional solidarity that seemingly
defies the logic of self-preservation. Rock’s take on the sensational trial and
acquittal of O. J. Simpson is similarly designed to take a shot at everybody,
regardless of race:“Black people too happy, white people too mad. Black people
saying,‘we won . . . we won.’What the fuck did we win? Everyday I look in the
mailbox for my O. J. prize and nothing. [Some folks say,] ‘Ooh, it’s all about
race.’ This shit wasn’t about race—it was about fame. If O. J. wasn’t famous he’d
be sitting in jail right now. If O. J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O. J., he’d
be Orenthal, the bus-driving murderer.”
As an equal-opportunity chastiser, Rock directs his comic ire at no single
target because he recognizes the complexity of race/power relations and their
impact on every aspect of American life. He forces the audience to confront this
racial discourse amidst the laughter. In both Bring the Pain and his follow-up
HBO special, Bigger and Blacker, filmed at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, Rock directly
challenges notions of black identity in ways that few black comics have
10. Chris Rock as the equal-opportunity offender in his HBO special Bring the Pain (1996).
Directed by Keith Truesdell.
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attempted. Like Pryor he mines the characters and stories of multiple black communities to comment on larger political issues. Like Gregory he unambiguously
states his views regarding the politicized sphere of race relations, whether by
underscoring the way the war on drugs disproportionately affects the African
American community (particularly young black men) or the politically informed
views of the criminal justice system: “Whole damn country is so conservative.
Everybody’s saying jails not tough enough . . . jails not tough enough . . . we got
to have the death penalty. Jails are fucked up—don’t believe the hype.The problem is jails are overcrowded because life is fucked up, too. People are broke.
People are starving. Life is fucked up. Shit, life is catching up to jail. If you live
in an old project, a new jail is not that bad.” His causal analysis of the complex
politics of incarceration, while not comprehensive, emphasizes economic
inequities and forces the audience to recognize how issues of class and race necessarily inflect burgeoning attitudes toward crime and punishment.
Paradoxically, around issues of gender Rock’s comic discourse lacks the same
incisiveness. While Rock’s act speaks from multiple positions on the political
spectrum, reactionary impulses can be discerned in his ruminations on gender
roles.All of Rock’s HBO specials have moments when they dally on the slippery
sexist slope tread by Murphy—as illustrated in Rock’s condemnation of domestic violence but his “understanding” the impulse that might drive a man to it, or
the difficult male choice between “commitment and new pussy.”13 By no means
is Rock’s act focused on issues of gender, but the sexual politics in his stand-up
comedy—from Bring the Pain to Bigger and Blacker—becomes progressively more
problematic as the comedic discourse becomes more reductive.
In Bigger and Blacker Rock’s tirade against the impact for young single
mothers “getting their groove on” when they should be “getting their kid on”
acts as a setup for an overly simplistic comic payoff: “If a kid calls his grandmamma ‘mommy’ and his mama ‘Pam,’ he’s going to jail.” The statement elicits
nervous laughter from all segments of his audience but fails to interrogate the
sociological implications that inform this particular phenomenon.14 Furthermore, as Rock off-handedly condemns this particular iteration of the multigenerational matriarchy in the African American community, he espouses and
reaffirms the preferential status of patriarchal gender roles.“If kids can’t read . . .
it’s Mama’s fucking fault [but] if the kid can’t read because there are no lights
in the house, that’s Daddy’s fault” represents a throwback to the days of stay-athome moms and single-income families—neither of which is the norm for
contemporary American society in general, and the black community in particular—nor has it ever truly been.15 It seems that Rock is still, to some extent,
under the sway of a culture that equates black male power with regressive gender roles—even Rock, the Pryor/Gregory heir apparent, is seemingly blind to
the race and class issues generating this attitude.
While Rock’s sexual politics adhere to traditional family values in terms of
gender, his views on sexuality, unlike most of his Def Jam brethren, are fairly
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progressive: his support of gays in the military (“let ’em fight, cuz I’m not
fightin’”) and his literal condemnation of homophobia (“don’t go in for that
. . . because whoever you hate is going to end up in your family”), while more
practical than radical, reflect more acceptance of gays and lesbians than most
black stand-up comedy. The radical impulses that drive Rock’s comic persona
toward uncompromisingly critical assessment also separate him from Murphy by
demonstrating his “ability to set [himself] firmly against the grain, to perceive
wrongheaded proscriptions and [to] speak out against them . . . [which] has
always been the cornerstone of socially relevant humor.”16 Thus, for better and
for worse, Rock’s stand-up persona embodies both progressive and regressive
forces in cultural criticism—with the ideological bias being entirely dependent
on which social issue is up for his comedic dissection.
Arguably, the most controversial material is rooted in intraracial introspection: Rock’s “Niggas vs. Black People” routine speaks directly to rifts within
the black community. “There’s some shit going on with black people right
now,” Rock asserts.“It’s like a civil war going on with black people.There’s two
sides—there’s black people and there’s niggas. And niggas have got to go. . . . I
love black people but I hate niggas.” On one hand, the virulent condemnation
of “niggas” requires of the audience a self-critical deconstruction of the historically charged term while pressuring them (black and white) to recognize issues
of difference (in terms of class and social practices) within the black community;
on the other, the failure to address the sociohistorical roots of the group that
Rock ahistorically defines as the undeserving underclass “niggas” problematizes
the “good black/bad black” binary set up in this routine. Indeed, it is often difficult to clearly discern the political intent of Rock’s verbal barbs.While scolding possible sites of institutional racism (criminal justice, schools, media), he
refuses to frame such issues in essentialist terms. In response to the audience
titters that follow the “Black People vs. Niggas” routine, Rock immediately
responds: “I see some black people looking at me—mad. ‘Why do you have to
say that, brother? It ain’t us, it’s the media. The media has distorted our image.’
. . . Please . . . when I go to the money machine tonight, I ain’t looking over my
back for the media—I’m looking for niggas.”The direct address to his predominantly black audience calls into question any easy assumptions about social
problems and issues of representation. On one hand, by casting himself as both
a scathing sociopolitical critic and a devil’s advocate, Rock offers perspectives
on African American life that speak to the conflicted and conflictual aspects of
a blackness that is constructed internally as well as externally. Rock provides a
comedic riff on a concretized version of what W. E. B. Du Bois asserted a century ago, that the black experience is informed by an internal division—a
“double consciousness”: “One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro;
two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one
dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”17
Although the term double consciousness does not adequately describe the
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complexity of either identity formation or meaning-making for most people of
color, the sensibility embodied in the phrase, and mobilized in the “Niggas vs.
Black people” routine, speaks to the ways in which Rock’s work resonates for
black audiences. On the other hand, the fact that some of Rock’s most biting
comic critique is focused on the black community might also explain his popularity with white audiences; as the insider who’s “telling it like it is” regardless
of whom the listeners might be, Rock constantly treads the thin line between
humor and heresy. Not surprisingly, while maintaining that he is first and foremost a stand-up comic, Rock has also become progressively more cognizant of
the power of his comedy as cultural critique and that, although he is speaking
from and to the black community, the numbers of those outside the community, and in his fan base, are legion. In a 2005 interview with Ed Bradley on
Sixty Minutes, Rock addressed the continued discussion of that 1997 routine: “I
think a lot of people were thinking in those terms [‘Niggas vs. Black People’]
and hadn’t been able to say it. By the way, I’ve never done that joke again, ever,
and I probably never will, ’cause some people that were racist thought they had
license to say ‘nigger.’ So, I’m done with that routine.”18 Nonetheless, for better
and for worse, Rock’s brand of comedic cultural critique played well for multiple audiences, and, by expanding his relationship with HBO to include a latenight series, the comic had the opportunity to both broaden his appeal and
hone his style of comedy. While, for the purposes of this study, greater attention—and close textual analysis—is dedicated to his HBO stand-up special as a
means of discerning the televisual codification of his comic persona, one would
be remiss not to note how his HBO late-night series further facilitated his
movement into the entertainment mainstream and A-list. It was the success of
the comic’s stand-up persona that afforded him the opportunity to stretch the
boundaries of the late-night talk genre.
The Emmy-winning The Chris Rock Show (1997–2000) emerged as a genuine alternative—an idiosyncratic condensation of the techniques used on
mainstream network (and netlet) programming like The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Arsenio Hall Show—not surprisingly, on the same premium cable outlet that aired both his breakout specials
and, in the first part of the decade, Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam, one of the
first high-profile televisual showcases for black comedians.19 More than simply
an attempt to jump on the counterprogramming train, Rock’s show, with
Grandmaster Flash of the legendary hip hop group Grandmaster Flash and the
Furious Five as the series’ musical director/DJ, reflected his vision of late-night
talk, which provided a prime example of African American cultural production.
The series sampled a range of contemporary black music—including the Artist
Formerly Known as Prince in his first show, and Ice-T in his last, Snoop Dogg
and Dr. Dre, DeAngelo, and Jill Scott in between—providing a space for these
acts in the years when hip-hop was just beginning to find its way onto the network late-night stages.
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Furthermore, Rock, acutely attuned to the rapid flow of both mainstream
and black popular culture, asserted that the show had a “youthful slant,” speaking to and about people who had not been the target of Leno or Letterman’s
monologues: “We’re joking about people never joked about before. They are
almost happy that their name is in the monologue. It’s a new thing ’cause no
one ever did [the late Wu Tang Clan Member and trouble magnet] Ol’ Dirty
Bastard jokes before me. And Letterman is doing it now. . . . No one ever put
on a suit and did a monologue and talked about these people.”20
Rock’s statement speaks to the larger significance in terms of providing a
black perspective on current events through the entertainment medium. In the
same way that Johnny Carson’s monologue functioned for decades as a means
of commentary (albeit usually pedestrian), Rock’s monologue, cutting a swath
across politics, culture, and the arts, gave a broad, cable audience his view of the
American condition. The Carson comparison is problematic, however, in that,
during the era before the Leno versus Letterman late-night-taste culture split,
Johnny’s voice was that of late night on network television. In the postnetwork
era, there was no single voice, in much the same way as there was no single
audience, but rather multiple niches (some more attractive—read lucrative—to
media outlets than others). Rock, like his equally irreverent (and even more difficult to ideologically pin) HBO late-night slot mate, Dennis Miller, spoke to a
younger and more culturally and politically savvy audience—both a desirable
and diverse demographic.21 Unlike most late-night fare, each episode ran a fast
thirty commercial-free minutes, was filmed live to tape, and consisted of a
monologue, sketches, and a single interview segment; the guests appeared not
because they were hawking new movies, books, or compact discs on the talkshow circuit but rather because they were figures that the series’ ethos deemed
relevant. Tangentially associated with Arsenio Hall’s showcasing of highly accessible aspects of black cultural coding (slang, gesture, etc.) in the realm of late
night talk (minus Arsenio’s semisycophantic coddling of guests and plus Rock’s
much edgier comedic awareness), the series reflected the imbrication of Rock’s
multiple ideologies in much the same way that his act does, both of which are
informed by the inherent refusal to be easily pinned, culturally or politically.22
The show became an entertainment-based forum for all corners of the black
public sphere, from cultural critic Cornell West, black female empowerment
guru and inspirational speaker Iyanla Vanzant, and director Spike Lee to figures
who had been targets of Rock’s comic ire, including the Reverend Al Sharpton, University of California regent Ward Connerly, and Marion Barry.
The recurring characters included Wanda Sykes, playing an angry political
“insider” who provides her commonsensical commentaries on the state of the
union from her post in the White House mailroom, and the enigmatic “Supercelebrity” “Pootie Tang” (Lance Crouthers), whose construction (think “ghetto
fabulousness meets blaxploitation”) lampooned multiple mediated and colloquial archetypes of black masculinity. Thus, the sometimes hostile nature of
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sketches is a logical extension of Rock’s stand-up ethos in the sketch comedy
format. Rock’s “man-on-the-street” interviews posed purposefully provocative
questions in often unlikely settings: whether interviewing white and black
South Carolina public and private citizens about the controversy over the Confederate flag flying over the State House or the residents of Howard Beach
about renaming a main thoroughfare for a slain black man. The latter segment
exemplifies the same layered form of comedic discourse discernible in Rock’s
stand-up; what begins as musing about why there are no streets named after
slain black men in white areas evolves into a sketch with a critical subtext that
conflates two killings that deeply resonate in black popular consciousness: those
of Tupac Shakur and Michael Griffith, the young black victim of the 1986
Howard Beach incident.23 No reminder of historical context is given during
Rock’s trek around Howard Beach as he asks residents to sign a petition to
change the name of Cross Bay Boulevard to Tupac Shakur Boulevard, a request
that yielded a full spectrum of responses from chuckling incredulousness to
downright hostility; however, the sounds of the in-house audience for that
evening’s taping provides both the groans and laughter that acknowledge the
significance of Rock’s site choice. Furthermore, as Acham observes,“Rock does
get several white residents to sign the petition but the images of the resentful
whites of Howard Beach at the turn of the last century cannot be ignored.”24
The sketches, the man-on-the-street interviews, and, of course, the monologue took conventional late-night comedy shtick and clearly transformed it by
providing Rock’s particular black sensibility, inflected by hip-hop culture, and
African American social history. Like Rock’s stand-up, the source of the praise
and the criticism during the series run was his persona as the equal-opportunity
offender. After the industrial success of Bring the Pain and Bigger and Blacker, and
the clout that accompanied it, Rock’s HBO series exemplified the ways in
which the black comic persona could flourish on the small screen—in an
amenable televisual space. Rock succeeded on late-night television where other
black comics’ attempts (like those of Keenen Ivory Wayans and Sinbad) had
failed. Rock’s comic persona permeated the series, informing both the style and
the content. Because it was HBO, where edginess is seen as bankable, there was
genuinely a space for contemporary iterations of blackness—at least where
comedy is concerned.
The reception of “edgy,” however, was (and is) dependent on both the sociocultural and industrial conditions, as well as spectatorial and critical taste. During the run of The Chris Rock Show, Eddie Murphy also returned to
television—or at least his voice did. The PJs, Eddie Murphy’s Claymation series
(think “California Raisins”), depicted life in the projects.The first volley against
The PJs came from Spike Lee, who called the series “incredibly demeaning. . . .
I kind of scratch my head why Eddie Murphy’s doing this. . . . I’m not saying
that we’re above being made fun of and stuff but it’s really hateful, I think,
towards Black people, plain and simple.”25 Lee was not alone. The PJs was the
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hot-button series for debates about black-on-black representations even before
its premiere. Lee’s comments fueled the controversy, as did negative press from
black journalists like Denene Millner’s cutting remarks about the PJs’ claim of
“keeping it real” in the New York Daily News:“Murphy’s a Long Island boy from
a stable, middle-class, two-parent household, who has never lived in the projects
so far as we know. And Lord knows that today, as a multi-millionaire with a
worldwide following, he’s about as far removed from ‘ghetto life’ as a Southern
Republican.”26 In response to the criticism of the series, LA Times critic
Howard Rosenberg states that The PJs is as much of a “slap in the face against
blacks as The Simpsons is against whites. . . . In the matter of The PJs are some
Black skins really that thin?”27 Larry Wilmore, the cocreator and executive producer, expressed exasperation at the criticism of the series, particularly since this
sort of parody, he maintained, was “nothing new”—given that African American
urban underclass characters have been staples in black comedy from Richard
Pryor’s stand-up to In Living Color. “I thought we would have gotten to the
point now that we can make fun of ourselves,” Wilmore asserted, “but people
say the images are so offensive they don’t even want to hear the point you’re
trying to make.”28
Proving that, to some extent, even bad publicity is good publicity, The PJs
scored the network’s second most watched series premiere, with almost twentytwo million viewers, and found a temporary home at Fox. In the series
Thurgood Stubbs, voiced by Murphy, is master of his domain as the super of the
Hilton Jacobs project; a mixture of Fred Sanford and Kingfish, he is also perpetually seeking shortcuts and schemes to enhance or solidify his position.29
Life with “Supa” makes poverty perversely pastoral.There are roaches, “forties”
of malt liquor, gunshots played for laughs in ambient sound. In other words, The
PJs makes Good Times look like a documentary on housing project life, but,
apparently, realism wasn’t really the point. As Mark Anthony Neal contends,“As
‘supa’s’ name—a surreal conflation of the late Supreme Court justice Thurgood
Marshall and the lead singer of the Four Tops, Levi Stubbs—suggests, he is at
once an antiquated reminder of a fictive black community where black folks
struggled together amid detrimental and demeaning circumstances and a vivid
caricature of a generation of black men who remain hopelessly sexist and
vulgar, but who regularly redeem themselves in the name of community.”30
While Larry Wilmore, The PJs’ coexecutive producer, has been the public
defender of the series, Murphy, for his part as executive producer, did not publicly comment.31 By the end of the following season, The PJs, which had been
moved, preempted, and put on hiatus by Fox several times over the course of
the 2000 season, was cancelled and promptly relocated to the WB as an unsuccessful midseason replacement (spring 2001). One has to wonder whether the
reception of The PJs was determined as much by the industrial and sociopolitical climate (namely the network “brownout” threatened by a coalition of
minority political groups including the NAACP) as the problematic nature of
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the series’ “hypercaricature” of the black underclass of the projects. Nevertheless, one wonders whether The PJs would have fared better in the age of South
Park and, of course, Chappelle’s Show.
In the five years between Bigger and Blacker (1999) and his fourth HBO
special, Never Scared (2004), Rock became a presence on both the big and small
screen. After leaving his critically and popularly acclaimed HBO series at the
end of 2001 and experiencing mixed success in his big-screen endeavors, like
Down to Earth (2001) and Head of State (2003), one might contend that his
return to stand-up took on the dual role of homecoming and de facto comeback show—either way, Rock’s status as the era’s ultimate stand-up seemed at
stake. Rock’s much touted return to stand-up revealed a more mature but no
less irreverent comedic figure. Like the Bone Crusher’s hip-hop anthem “I Ain’t
Never Scared,” from which the special’s title seems inspired, Rock’s fourth
HBO special resounded with self-assurance and defiance—which was exactly
what the audience expected. While one might contend that Never Scared does
not provide the level of biting critique that was present in Bring the Pain (the
opening comic assault on Marion Barry) or the intentionally outrageous
dualisms of Bigger and Blacker (his post-Columbine confession of “being afraid
of young white males”), it is the skillfully constructed set of a veteran comic.
Like the comics whose albums were superimposed over Rock’s initial stroll to
the stage in Bring the Pain (as well as others like Moms Mabley, Buddy Hackett,
Carl Reiner, and Mel Brooks, whose acts are on rotation in his I-Pod), his ability to both read and work his audience has been carefully honed by study and
practice.
As Josh Wolk notes, Rock tackles issues that many of his peers only touch
on for shock value—“abortion, affirmative action, racism”—with “brutal,
relentless, honesty.”32 In an Entertainment Weekly article proclaiming him “the
funniest man in America,” Rock’s discussion of the care with which his pedantic joke-attacks are structured seems to resonate with Dick Gregory’s musing on
comedy’s “friendly relation” and the careful balancing act required of the black
comic:“I never stop the show to get a point across, I get it in there, but it’s jokes,
jokes, jokes.You do some weird abortion joke, that thing’s gotta be worded just
. . . right. . . .You’re literally dealing with nitroglycerine. One drop and the whole
place goes up.”33 The construction of Rock as “comic as truth-teller” is far from
a naturalistic process. The forcefully stated assertions, made as if they are
commonsense pronouncements in Rock’s act, are the product of a comic
who obsessively rewrites his jokes with the knowledge of both where and to
whom he speaks. This consciousness of his multiple audiences—and the
“nitroglycerine-like” quality of comedic social discourse—guides Rock’s work
as both a comic craftsman and a black stand-up comic. Always cognizant of the
experience of “speak[ing] two languages . . . and perform[ing] for people who
don’t look anything like you,” Rock states, “nobody else has to do that: Lenny
Bruce, Seinfeld, anybody. . . . I pride myself on being the guy who can do Def
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Comedy Jam and Charlie Rose. And do well on both.”34 However, the consciousness and care do not necessarily act as inhibitors for Rock’s critique: they
simply underscore the fact that his comic “truths” are pointed and purposeful.
The content of Rock’s act, with his tirades against cultural and institutional
practices, facilitates what Michael Eric Dyson refers to as “the seepage of his discourse beyond boundaries of ethnic and racial communities.”35 His cross-cultural appeal seems to extend beyond the simple industrial notion of
crossover—because, the careful construction of his act does not involve a
homogenizing process. Rather, Rock’s discursive game is riskier. Again, as
Dyson notes:“We can’t pretend that we don’t live in a political context in which
white Americans say, ‘See, what we told you about those black folks must be
true since there’s a black man on television saying the same thing.’ I think we
have to run that risk to get the ‘truth’ as we see it, as we’re willing to argue for
its existence in given cultural and social contexts.”36 Thus, Rock’s persona,
comic as truth teller, which draws audiences of myriad different positions on the
American sociopolitical spectrum, is granted permission to speak from multiple
positions.While the Rock of 1996 caught audiences by surprise with his quasicaustic candor, the Rock of 2004 is not kinder and gentler—he simply has a
more fluid ideological and sociopolitical agenda.
Before Rock comes onstage, the HBO broadcast touts the comic’s stand-up
prowess by including snippets of interviews with the preshow audience as they
enter. In one of the three adulation-drenched clips, a thirty-something African
American woman states, “Like he says, there are niggers and there are black
people. Chris Rock is a progressive black man.” This statement, which ties
together a reference to arguably his most famous bit from Bring the Pain and the
marker of “progressive” on his brand of humor, is significant. Her label of
“progressive black man” may speak more to Rock’s position in the entertainment world than it necessarily does to the content of his entire stand-up act.
While it is difficult to discern whether the woman’s complimentary remarks
spoke to Rock as a comic who speaks “truth to power,” as in the nuanced “realities” of a diverse African American community (as in “Niggers and Black
People”), or as an African American entertainer who possesses neither an act nor
a comic persona that traffics in minstrelesque buffoonery, one might argue that
the construction of his comic persona is progressive—though not always positive.37 As noted in the earlier discussion of Rock’s stand-up, one might argue
that the gender politics fall within the realm of the regressive, at worst, and the
traditional, at best. Even his discussions of race can be seen to engage class in
some essentializing ways.The truth of the matter is that most humor—particularly most African American humor—is inflected by progressive and regressive
impulses: and few comics embrace both with the same ferocity as Rock.
By the premiere of Never Scared in April of 2004, the thirty-nine-year-old
Rock was considered a stand-up virtuoso, and, as such, aspects of his comic discourse have become common knowledge in American popular culture. Unlike
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Murphy’s stand-up triumphs, Delirious and Raw, which were the products of a
very young and very talented comic superstar, whose audacious observational
humor was rooted in problematic sexual politics and popular culture savvy,
Never Scared, and, indeed, all of Rock’s stand-up is sociocultural comedic discourse embedded in an elaborate structure of jokes and jokes and jokes. Murphy
was the charming bad boy; Rock, then and now, is part comic and part preacher.
Rock has even admitted as much—at least stylistically speaking. His rhetorical
strategy of repeating phrases multiple times in the course of a joke series, has
become a trademark, a technique that, he states, “I probably got from preachers.”38 Yet for Rock, as an African American comic dealing with formidable
social issues, the motivation for utilizing the repetition is rooted in guiding the
audience through his particular comic object lesson:“If I gloss over the setup, it
could be combustible especially when I get into racial dynamics. If you’ve got
the nerve to be a rich nigger onstage, complaining about the plight of your
people, everybody is like ‘fuck you. You’re doing good.’ Like I shouldn’t care
about my people because I can buy 10 pairs of sneakers.”39
When actor/comic/rapper Doug E. Fresh announces Rock with the exclamation, “D.C. Are You Ready?” the crowd’s frenzy can barely be contained.
Rock comes onstage in a tailored deep burgundy suit with subtle black pinstripe, black shirt and black handkerchief, diamonds in his ears and a tenthousand-watt grin. For this most recent iteration of Rock’s comic persona the
constant movement across the stage was neither the hyped up pacing of Big Ass
Jokes nor the cocky strutting of either Bring the Pain or Bigger and Blacker. His
entrance reminded me of watching Ali walk into the ring in the “Rumble in
the Jungle”: every step, little dance move, and even putting his hand to his ear,
signaling them to pump up the volume of their cheers, seemed designed for one
purpose: Rock was there to win. While one might argue that the parallels
between boxing and stand-up may seem tenuous, Rock refers to his stand-up
performances on the 2004 Black Ambition tour as being in training for the performance filmed at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.40
In Never Scared Rock’s combination (joke) series are also reminiscent of
Ali’s “rope a dope” in discursive terms. With the original “rope-a-dope” Ali
allowed Foreman to believe that he knew the direction that the fight was taking (and to pummel him with body blows on the ropes) until literally, he, who
was “the greatest,” reverses that direction with a left-right combo. Rock also
plays with audience expectations—rather than coming in pounding the audience with scathing critique (his technique in Bring the Pain), Rock toys with
them with initial material that provides the insight without the critical bite
(and, thus allowing them to believe that they can anticipate the parameters of
his comedy skills set) before moving into a comedic discourse designed to facilitate more complicated cultural introspection. This particular form of audience
play also reveals the ideological swings in Rock’s material. His “realization” that,
as a new father, his only job in life is to keep his daughter “off the pole” and his
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further theories on strip club folklore (from, she’s stripping her way through
college, to the lunch buffet is the real draw for daytime patrons) provide easy
commentary on modern morality. His establishment of a traditional paternal
paradigm as an ideal, and its causal relationship for women’s behavior, while
humorous, corresponds with the quasi-judgmental tone (bordering on sexism)
that Rock often employs when discussing women’s foibles. The sexual politics
of the first joke series is simultaneously ambivalent and conservative: by citing
the need for someone to fulfill the fantasies of the married man (implying that
there are things a “good” woman won’t do) and detailing a “wife’s” vehement
refusal to a “nasty” request (to don part of the stripper’s new uniform—clear
heels), critiques both the madonna and the whore constructions of womanhood, while still clearly privileging the former.
While Rock’s style is unrelenting, moving from one fast-paced joke series
to the next, like the repeated phrases within the joke series itself, thematic
repetition takes place throughout the eighty-minute act. His gender critique reappears as a sideline in a bit relating to broader cultural commentary that
engages both personal and cultural history: his love of rap and his difficulties
with defending the recent examples of the genre. Here Rock’s persona can be
characterized as the “truth-teller” meets the preacher. In this bit, and various
times during the set, Rock is giving a comedic sermon that belies both discursive urgency and ideological certainty.
I’m 39 years old and I still love Rap Music. I love it. I’m that age when I’ve
been loving rap music forever. . . . I love rap music but I’m tired of defending it. . . . And in the old days, it was easy to defend rap music. It was easy
to defend it on an intellectual level (raises hand as if to indicate high level
at which rap formerly functioned). To break it down intellectually why
Grandmaster Flash was art.Why Run DMC was art.Why Houdini was art
and music, you could break it down. I love all the rappers today but it’s hard
to defend this shit. It’s hard. It’s hard to defend “I Got Ho’s in Different area
codes.”
Rock further lures the audience into his discourse by citing a particular song
that is “impossible to defend” and that “we should all be ashamed . . . for liking.” At the mention of Lil’ Jon, the godfather of the Dirty South “crunk”
sound, the audience goes wild and raps with him: “From the window, to the
walls, till the sweat drips from my balls, till the sweat drips from my balls, skeet,
skeet, skeet.” Rock goes through the chorus again simulating a female’s crunked
up little dance to this extremely popular club anthem—hand waving in the air,
low stepping semigrind. Given the clearly sexual nature of the song and its
widespread popularity, Rock’s quotation is not surprising; the critique of this
subgenre of rap takes a very gendered angle. His sly chuckle becomes a throaty
guffaw as he relays the fact that women who like rap are not phased by the
accusations of misogyny thrown at the genre—“if the beat’s alright, she’ll dance
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all night.” Using progressively more sexually explicit language, he creates an
impromptu crunked up song; Rock, imitating the female rap fan, repeats the
low stepping semigrind to a rap that begins with “Smack ’em with the dick,
smack ’em with the dick.” His reflection upon the rap fan’s lack of offense at
these lyrics is stated with faux incredulousness:“You know what’s funny? If you
mention to a woman that the song is disgusting and misogynistic, they all give
you the same answer—‘He ain’t talking about me.’” However, what seems more
telling, in terms of his gendered view of rap fandom comes when he conflates
questions of virtue and taste: “I pity the guys that got to pick a wife out of this
bunch. (In childlike voice) ‘Daddy, where did you meet Mommy?’ (In a nostalgiatinged adult voice) ‘Oh, she was singing about balls at a club. Skeet, skeet,
skeet.’” While Rock’s feigned incredulousness, his impromptu sing-a-long, and
his dancing imitation take the edge off of his mitigated condemnation, the fact
remains that although we should all be “ashamed” of singing along with Lil’ Jon,
only women bare the brunt of actual shame in relationship to the song’s oftrepeated catchphrase: “Skeet.”41 While the gendered commentary on this particular aspect of hip-hop-taste culture certainly possesses markers of regressive
sexual politics, the sentiments do not appear to challenge the audience’s sensibilities—rather, it seems to speak to, and of, a sort of shared cultural knowledge
about the pleasures and content of contemporary rap. In other words, the audience is still with him. In annunciating this insider perspective, Rock maintains
an affinity with the audience even while introducing commentary that requires
some degree of personal introspection—albeit uncritical at this point.
Rock’s repeated assertion of his love for rap music, and his exhaustion at
being compelled to defend it, also speaks to a generational divide that underscores the ideological differences between old-school-conscious rap like
Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message” and the crazy drunk (“crunk”) partying
songs of Lil’ Jon.42 While condemning neither strains of rap in these passing
references, Rock historicizes the cultural significance of rap as a genre rooted
in, and associated with, a particular black urban experience—as well as the possible motivations for institutional aversion to the music, its practitioners, and
the experience of black life that it can and has chronicled.The notion that “rap
killings” are investigated and prosecuted in less aggressive ways (“if you want
to get away with murder, shoot somebody and then stick a demo tape in his
pocket”) has become a staple in the sets of many black comics since the late
nineties, and, as Rock aptly notes, since the very public and still unsolved murders of Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, and Jam Master Jay. Thus, Rock draws
attention to another sociohistorical legacy that resonates within the African
American community—that of a legal system that is far from color blind. As if
to pound the point home, Rock chooses an intentionally eclectic collection of
classic rockers to underscore the politics of differentiation at play—maintaining that if Billy Joel, David Bowie, and Elton John had been murder victims,
Bruce Springsteen’s house would be encircled by police. Within the rubric of
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a discussion about rap Rock has moved between discourse on intra- and intercultural practices and segues from taste cultures to questionable institutional
practices and, quite literally, the lack of equal protection.
Yet attention to the discursive misdirection that Rock employs in Never
Scared—the mixture of comic combinations that play into the audience’s perceptions and challenge its (moral/cultural) sensibilities and its intellectual acuity—does not negate the moments of direct comic confrontation that
followed somewhat predictable targets. His material on the legal problems
experienced by highly visible black celebrities yielded big laughs from the
crowd. Stating that Michael Jackson is “crazy” and that the “King of Pop’s”
recurring legal woes seem like “groundhog’s day,”43 or questioning Kobe
Bryant’s decision not to hire Johnny Cochran because it would make him
“look guilty” (stating the merit of being yet another black man protesting his
innocence from his jail cell versus “looking guilty at the mall”), is hardly the
edgiest material in Rock’s comic arsenal. However, the appraisals of the perils of high-profile black celebrity are designed to segue into a narrative that
speaks to his audience in what are, arguably, racially coded terms. Although in
each of these instances, the celebrity’s travails are known to mainstream audiences, for black audiences it is likely that the discussion of these struggles have
also been part of casual conversation (and argument) in communal and home
spaces. On one hand, one might say that this practice of “airing dirty laundry”
has become an expected part of Rock’s act; on the other, the intraracial
celebrity commentary in this passage is mobilized as part of a rant that has a
universalizing effect in service to a particular purpose: the fact that “we” have
all been lied to: “Don’t let all this celebrity news fool you. [His meter slows
to punctuate the importance of the statement.] It is just a trick to get your
mind OFF THE WAR. Trick to get your mind off the war. I think Bush sent
that girl to Kobe’s room. [The crowd laughs] Bush sent that girl to Kobe’s
room. Sent that boy to Michael Jackson’s house. Bush killed Laci Peterson.
Bush was fucking Paris Hilton in that video—all to get your mind OFF THE
WAR. Bush lied to me.”
This joke passage illustrates yet another instance of Rock speaking across
cultural boundaries—not simply because in making intentionally outrageous,
conspiracy theory–inflected assertions he deals with black and white
victims/defendants/celebrities but rather because he calls attention to the fact
that these alleged governmental deceptions are neither race specific or isolated
instances.The implied “we” of this passage is the American public—although, I
would argue, the ideological wakeup call for the African American community
is a bit more pointed. Rock frames his antiwar commentary in the context of
one who “loves this country”; however, as he speaks of love of country—practices that take place in the name of patriotism—Rock reminds his audience
(black and white) how easily “Patriotism turn[s] into hatriotism,” and the meaning that should have for the African American community.
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There was a lot of accepted racism. “I’m American, man. I’m American,
man, fuck the foreigners.” And that was cool. “I’m American, man. I’m
American, man, Fuck the French.” And that was cool. “I’m American, man.
I’m American, man, Fuck the Arabs,” and [with a dismissive wave of the
hand], that was cool. And then they went to “I’m American, man. I’m
American, man, fuck all these illegal aliens,” and then I started listening cuz
I know Niggers and Jews is next. [The crowd howls with laughter and
applauds this “logical” progression] Any day now (raising his arm to look at
his watch), that train’s never late.
His throaty guffaw acts the exclamation mark for the passage. By acknowledging
the regressive components of patriotism, Rock once again brings the issue of
race to the discursive table. Referencing the Oklahoma City bombing (Timothy
McVeigh associated with the white supremacist Michigan militia) and the brutal
slaying of James Byrd (random racial violence in Jasper,Texas), the comic makes
clear that there are far greater “terrorist” dangers to the African American community.With eyes blazing, staring right at the audience and at the camera, Rock’s
pronouncement, inflected by race-coded common sense, conveys a declarative
intensity and ideological certainty:“I’m from Brooklyn, I don’t give a shit about
Al-Qaeda. . . . I ain’t scared of Al-Qaeda—I’m scared of Al-Cracker.You have to
look out for cracker Al. He’s a dangerous motherfucker.”
The joke series has segued into a sociopolitical comedic sermon with
Rock, as heavyweight truth-teller, utilizing the rhetorical strategy of repetition,
comic misdirection, and first-person observation to bring the point (and the
punch line) home. As a self proclaimed student of comedy and current events,
Rock contends that “anyone who makes up their fucking mind before they hear
the issue is a fucking fool, okay.” In so doing, he defies being posited within any
ideological or political camp—and encourages others to do the same in a comic
passage that serves as a commonsense civics lesson. Equating performing political affinity to membership in a gang, Rock makes a call for ideological, political, and social individuality: “Be a fucking person! LISTEN! No normal decent
person is one thing—I got some stuff I’m conservative about. . . . Crime: I’m
conservative, prostitution: I’m liberal.”While the directive itself speaks to a certain rugged individualist ethos that is (sociohistorically speaking) very American, Rock here, and throughout his act, annunciates an array of ideologies
inflected by lived experience and by national, racial, and cultural identities.The
articulation of Rock’s stand-up persona is informed by a comic style and discursive strategies that, for all of its irreverent consistency, is inherently fluid,
defies being fixed in terms of a specific point on the political spectrum, and
underscores the imperative that people listen in order make up their minds for
themselves.
Like the “Rumble in the Jungle” did for Ali, Rock’s fourth HBO comedy
special reaffirms the comic’s stand-up prowess; Rock, at the height of his
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comedic powers—older, wiser, and wilier—demands that audiences examine
the world in which they live. Embedded in the act are numerous instances in
which Rock, who has created a sense of affinity with the audience (casting himself as a part of the many implied we’s of the joke series) contests popularly held
notions—whether about patriotism, celebrity, or individual responsibility. His
willingness to voice his position—taking into consideration audience and venue
but never allowing that to dilute the discursive force of his comedy—makes
Rock the poster boy for comedy as sociopolitical discourse.Whether or not one
agrees with Rock’s multiple ideological agenda, one cannot help but be struck
by the degrees of fearlessness in his stand-up. Thus, Never Scared serves a dual
purpose for Rock, and for African American comedic discourse in the new millennium, as both a description and declaration of blackness, and its primacy in
understanding both American popular culture and the American condition.
While Never Scared reaffirmed Rock’s stand-up sovereignty, neither the
critical acclaim nor the industrial hype for his long-awaited stand-up special
came close to the media frenzy around his semiautobiographical sitcom, Everybody Hates Chris. Like Murphy’s return to television with The PJs, Rock’s considerable industrial and popular cultural cachet focused attention on the series
long before its premiere. Unlike the considerable critique of Murphy’s controversial Claymation outing, neither the authenticity nor the sensitivity of Rock’s
sitcom, in comic as well as cultural terms, were called into question. Everybody
Hates Chris is loosely based on Rock’s experience of growing up in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn and being bused to an all-white
school.
Everybody Hates Chris was the most anticipated comedy of the 2005–6
season, which caused even more entertainment media frenzy because of its network (or, more aptly, netlet) home, United Paramount Network (UPN). Before
deciding to base the series on the comic’s life, Rock and cocreator Ali LeRoi
originally pitched the series as a black urban Wonder Years (the early-nineties
nostalgia dramedy).When Fox, who had the first option on the pilot, ultimately
passed, citing concerns over the expense of yet another single-camera sitcom44
and over whether Rock’s involvement after the pilot might be limited, UPN
president Dawn Ostroff did not hesitate to make Everybody Hates Chris the
centerpiece of the netlet’s lineup.45
“Rock has said Everybody Hates Chris is not a literal version of his childhood, but it is a pretty literal version of his comedy.”46 The voice of the series
is undoubtedly Rock’s, both in comic sensibility and in actuality: the comic
supplies the voiceover as the adult version of his teenaged alter ego (newcomer
Tyler James Williams). As is true in the comic’s stand-up, the sitcom refuses to
elide issues of race and class. As LeRoi states, “We’re dealing with class issues
much more so than race issues. It’s not black folks don’t get along with white
folks. It’s which black folks don’t get along with which white folks and why. It’s
broke people trying to do the best they can and we’re not going to make a
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speech about it.We’re just going to show them doing it.”47 This nuclear family
is neither the Huxtables nor the Evanses (Good Times). Everybody Hates Chris
directly engages class and race within a domestic comedy context where neither the family nor its living conditions are idealized. Given that Rock’s comedy and lived experiences inform the series, it also avoids the kind of excessive
sentimentality often associated with nostalgia sitcoms.
The setting establishes a clear connection with a post-soul urban experience. The first episode begins with the parents, Julius (Terry Crews) and
Rochelle (Tichina Arnold), and their children, Chris, Drew (Tequan Richmond), and Tonya (Imani Hakim), moving from the projects into an apartment
in what was assumed to be a better neighborhood. Both the move and his
mother’s insistence that Chris be bused to the all-white middle school were
motivated by the desire for safety and opportunity. Rochelle’s fierce protectiveness of her family, her firm but loving discipline (with explicit threat of physical reinforcement: “I’ll slap your name out of the phone book and call Ma Bell
and tell her I did it”), and her fiscal sensibilities (running the family finances
“like the government—on a deficit”) embody the continued striving for an
iteration of the American Dream that promises that the next generation will
have it better than the previous one did. Yet the well-intentioned, pragmatic
actions of his civil rights era parents did not always yield the expected results,
as Rock’s omniscient narration intones, reflecting on the family’s 1982 move to
Bed-Sty: “Had we known that Bed-Sty was going to be the center of the crack
epidemic, I guess we would have moved somewhere else.”
Just as the first episode of The Cosby Show narrativized aspects of Bill Cosby:
Himself, the pilot of Everybody Hates Chris sampled the comic’s autobiographical
material—from Big Ass Jokes to Never Scared. The choice of samples, however,
further underscores the post-soul aesthetic in the series.The subtext of the televisualized version of Rock’s “school as hell” routine (which recounts being
called “nigger” and “getting beaten up just about every day”) questions the efficacy of the civil rights era–informed goals of integration for young black teens
in 1980s urban America. When Chris attempts to use his purported street cred
(being from “Bed-Sty: Do Or Die”) to “out black” the quintessential bully, Joey
Caruso, the bravado and verbal vivisection prove to be futile: he is only saved
by running for the bus out of Brooklyn Beach (the televisual stand-in for
Bensonhurst). The altercation with hostile white middle-schoolers, led by
Caruso, and the indifference of white authority figures (the school principal, a
police officer, and the bus driver) reveal a racial climate that is less than ideal but
also less than 1950s Little Rock or 1970s Boston. It also alludes to the post-soul
baby, dealing with how far we haven’t come.
That is not to say that the series discounts the civil rights struggle. In the
final scene of the episode, when Julius checks in on his family, as he does every
night “between his night job and his late night job,” he asks Chris about school.
As the voiceover states,“I didn’t tell him about the fight. My dad went to school
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during the civil rights era. After hoses, tanks, and dogs biting your ass, somehow
Joey Caruso didn’t compare.” Archival footage depicting those trials (as well as
a black and white image of the bully, Caruso, just prior to Chris’s beating) are
juxtaposed with the images of the father sitting on the edge of the son’s bed.
The son’s respect for the father’s struggle, in the past and present, is unquestionable. The same scene, a softened reiteration of the critique in “Niggers vs.
Black People” dealing with the desire to be lauded for things “you’re supposed
to do” (“I take care of my kids”), forwards a construction of black fatherhood
that acknowledges the father’s era as well as the son’s. After the notoriously frugal Julius slips a couple of extra dollars to his son, he moves toward the door
and says,“I’ll see you in the morning.” In voiceover, Rock remarks,“He was one
of four fathers on the block. ‘I’ll see you in the morning’ meant he was coming
home. Coming home was his way of saying ‘I love you.’” On one hand, in this
scene, as in his stand-up, a traditional familial (arguably, paternal) paradigm is
privileged. One might argue that it simultaneously speaks to the inordinate
numbers of fatherless black children in the post-soul era and fails to address the
sociopolitical reasons for the black male absence. On the other hand, the scene,
like the series, might be seen as a comedic discursive attempt to create kinship
and bridge the gap between a civil rights era ethos and the lived experiences of
post-soul babies.
Murphy and Rock represent two strains of black humor that converge
stylistically but diverge significantly in terms of ideological content and their
performance of blackness. As Rock himself notes, his humor bears a closer kinship to the socially relevant comics of a previous generation (Gregory, George
Carlin, and Pryor) than it does to Murphy and his Def Jam progeny.48 Interestingly, Murphy embodies in many ways Dick Gregory’s prescription for
crossover success: he is a black funny man, not a funny black man. However, this
semantic difference is problematized within the context of Murphy’s stand-up
act, where his particular enunciation of blackness does not inform the content
in either a critical or an especially progressive manner. One might even argue
that Eddie’s stand-up is fundamentally about Eddie—his celebrity, his sexuality,
his experience of media. On one hand, this is reflective of the idiosyncratic
aspect of comedy that allows for the creation of a unique comic persona—a
fresh voice. On the other, the post-SNL comic persona of Murphy, while being
a significant comic annunciation of black masculinity and machismo, arguably,
speaks not to the black experience in broader sociocultural terms but rather to
the black superstar experience—with a certain brand of observational humor
that is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
By contrast, Rock’s comic persona is built around sociopolitically informed
articulations of blackness and serves as the post-soul era’s logical reconstruction
of Gregory’s comedic discourse—in a slightly less transparent ideological frame.
While Rock’s kinship with Gregory is clear, so is his nostalgic affinity and
semireverence for the position Cosby occupies in the pantheon of American
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comedy: “I’d love to be Cosby . . . [and] have a whole new hour and a half of
material at 66. But Cosby is a storyteller. Cosby is from jazz. He loves jazz, worships jazz, and his style is pretty Dizzy Gillespie. Me, I’m from hip-hop. I’m
doing LL Cool J. I’m doing Run [DMC]. The rhythm is of old-school hiphop.”49 Unlike Murphy, who plays out the struggle with his comic predecessors
in the Cosby versus Pryor bit in Raw and repeatedly states his affinity with
Pryor (and, later, Redd Foxx) in word and action but captures only style not
substance, Rock’s musical analogy makes a more nuanced comment on his relationship with the civil rights era–bred Cosby. While both jazz and hip-hop are
clearly associated with black cultural production, it is telling that the former,
positioned clearly with an earlier age, speaks to a more narrow swath of the contemporary audience—regardless of color—than the latter.That is not to say that
there is not an acknowledgment and even reverence for jazz greats from Dizzy
Gillespie to Charlie Parker to Miles Davis and John Coltrane; however, one
might argue that there is the recognition that the music, while oft sampled (in
both senses of the word) and savored, does not necessarily speak directly to contemporary notions of black cultural production.
I tease out this analogy because I believe it also speaks to Rock’s relationship to Cosby, as the “personal responsibility” and “airing dirty laundry” aspects
of his comic discourse resonate, in some significant ways, with his forebear’s controversial statements about the ills of the black underclass. While I would not
assert that Rock’s intraracial commentary embraces a kind of black middle-class
vilification of “those other blacks” that, at least, informed Cosby’s now famous
rant, some of the sentiments do express discourse previously reserved for black
communal spaces—not every media outlet imaginable. How could one not see
a connection between his now abandoned “Black People vs. Niggas” routine and
the tone, if not the exact content, of Cosby’s orations on “lower class blacks.”
Like Rock (and Murphy, for that matter), I am a “tweener,” a product of the
waning years of the Baby Boom and just prior to the emergence of Gen X,
which means that we were the first generation of black America to come of age
in the post–civil rights era. Rock’s espoused “old-school” affiliation positions
him with the first crop of post-soul babies.As such, his comedic discourse reflects
an understanding of civil rights era sociopolitical directives while also questioning their complete applicability to the contemporary African American condition. It also speaks to the mixture of apathy and anger (and often undirected
desire for action) born and bred in response to the socioeconomic disparities and
political disaffection gifted by Reaganism, the thwarted promises of the Clinton
era, and the growing class and culture rifts of one nation under Bush. Once transferred to the big screen, the convergences and divergences between the comic
personae of Murphy and Rock come into sharper focus, as do the color adjustments required—and endeavored—to achieve crossover success.
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Chap te r 3
Post-Soul Comedy Goes to the Movies
Cinematic Adjustme nts and
[Pop] Cultural Curre ncy
The transition from stand-up to screen has been markedly
easier for Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock than for the previous generations of
black comedians. Nonetheless, the creation of their cinematic personae has
required the negotiation of comedic identities, as well as industrial and generic
conventions and constraints.Thus, for the purposes of this study, their film roles
will be examined in relationship to three unique subgenres: the “fish-out-of
water” film, the comedy of color-coded color blindness, and cultural comedies
with creative control.To varying degrees these subgenres simultaneously recognize and elide race and correspond to roles played by Murphy—and, to a lesser
extent, Rock—during different points in their big-screen careers.
The Fish-Out-of-Wate r Come die s
The outsider’s struggle to survive and thrive in a foreign, possibly hostile,
world has always provided grist for the film comedy mill—from Buster Keaton’s
city-bred Canfield heir returning to claim the rural family estate in Our Hospitality (1923) to Martin Lawrence’s thief turning detective to recover stashed loot
in Blue Streak (1999). This comic staple functions differently, however, when a
black comic is placed at the center of the insider/outsider paradigm. In such
cases black stars are situated in cinematic milieus cut off from other representations of blackness, or even from other black characters, thereby placing them in
the dubious position of representing the race. Ed Guerrero suggests, “One reason for the contextual isolation of the black star (or co-star) is not too hard to
discern simply because many of these vehicles were originally written for white
stars.”1 For example, the role that catapulted Murphy into superstardom, Axel
Foley in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), was written for Sylvester Stallone.
Both Axel Foley and Reggie Hammond (48 Hrs, 1982) are roles that
allowed Murphy to incorporate his stand-up persona within a big-screen role.
Although 48 Hrs “literalizes the metaphor of the black image being in the protective custody of white authority,” Hammond acts as the embodiment of street
sensibility and stand-up swagger.2 The film operates within the interracial
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buddy film paradigm by focusing on the temporary alliance forged between
surly, experienced cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) and small-time criminal
Hammond (the “good” bad guy) in order to catch the latter’s former partner.
Murphy’s character is introduced as a disembodied voice that wafts through the
cellblock singing along to The Police’s “Roxanne,” his fondness for the mainstream pop group signaling a likable and unthreatening Anglo-friendliness.
Playing off young/old, black/white, criminal/cop dichotomies, the uneasy but
amiable alliance of Hammond and Cates acts as a sort of race relations fable that
insists we can all just get along.
Reggie Hammond displays the signature black machismo of Murphy’s
comic persona as well as the verbal acuity of his stand-up (particularly when he
tells barroom rednecks that “I’m your worst fucking nightmare—a nigger with
a badge”). Hammond’s “quest for flesh,” a running subplot, gives Murphy an
opportunity to dip into the sexual dynamo shtick he honed in Delirious. By
film’s end Hammond is both a hero and a stud: by refusing to grab the money
and run, he wins the respect of Nolte’s character and returns to jail transformed,
if not reformed, by his interaction with Nolte’s embodiment of the fair side of
the white justice system. In turn, the cop allows the criminal to get laid as a
reward for “doing the right thing.”
In Beverly Hills Cop and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) Axel Foley mocks, but
ultimately serves, the needs of a white populace. The murder of his white running buddy brings him to Beverly Hills in the original, while the sequel motivates Foley’s actions by means of his inflated sense of loyalty to BHPD’s Captain
Bogamil (Ronny Cox). Foley’s methods and his savvy prove to be superior to
those of his white cohorts, Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John
Ashton), but his performance of a hard-boiled Detroit cop converts much of the
casework into comic antics. Murphy’s skill at slipping into multiple characters is
utilized repeatedly, from his angry black man rant at the Beverly Wilshire to his
turn as the egregiously fey “special friend” of the film’s villain. His unorthodox
methods are eventually lauded because of the fact that, once the case is solved,
he will be returned to offscreen (black) space. By utilizing the humor in Foley’s
cameo of blackness in fundamentally white worlds, Murphy’s interloper is constructed as an idealized and temporary Other.
Furthermore, perhaps because it was not originally intended for a black
actor, Beverly Hills Cop occasionally elides and reworks blackness in almost nonsensical ways. As Donald Bogle notes: “Coming from the streets of Detroit (the
very city whose ghettoes had gone up in flames during the race riots of the
60s), the character’s friends logically would have been black. But Eddie Murphy
is plopped into a white environment in order that a mass white audience can
better identify with him. . . . It’s an unrealistic plot maneuver that reveals Hollywood’s cynicism about the major black star and his audience.”3 Both of Foley’s
closest childhood friends in Beverly Hills Cop (Mikey and Jenny) are white.
Moreover, although there are fleeting hints of a romance between Foley and
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Jenny (Lisa Eilbacher), he is more or less sexually neutralized, despite the swaggering machismo of his step and speech. After all, seeing Murphy woo a white
actress would have made the film decidedly less friendly to a mainstream (read
white) audience. Ed Guerrero points out that “the source of energy and tension
in all of Murphy’s movies is race, and to a lesser degree, class, deriving from
Murphy’s blackness as a challenge to white exclusion (but not privilege or domination) . . . and while Murphy gets the upper-hand in almost all situations, the
ultimate result of such a challenge is integration and acceptance on white terms
in the film’s resolution.”4 Hammond and Foley both clearly exemplify the
repackaging of the black stand-up persona for mass consumption, with
Murphy’s quick-witted wisecracking and street kid charisma informing the
iteration of his screen persona as black comic action star.5
Although Murphy appeared to have exhausted this generic type by the
nineties, it is interesting that his black fish-out-of-water roles garnered the most
critical and commercial success. Ultimately, just as Foley acts as the “exception”
that can be celebrated within a white milieu on a temporary basis, Murphy can
be embraced as black comic action hero so long as he does not transgress other
mainstream Hollywood boundaries—such as his construction as a romantic
leading man.
In Bad Company (2002) Rock had his first opportunity to play in a fish-outof-water action-comedy.6 Rock plays “street-smart” hustler Jake Hayes, the long
lost twin of “Super African American” CIA operative Kevin Pope, who is
pressed into service to impersonate the brother he never knew. Interestingly, the
“fish-out-of-water” characterization seems applicable on both textual and
extratextual levels. In the cinematic text stereotypical constructions of blackness
are mobilized in Hayes’s attempt to impersonate Pope (the Alexander Scott for
11. Eddie Murphy, as a very savvy fish out of water, does buddy bonding with John Ashton
(left) and Judge Reinhold in Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Directed by Martin Brest.
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the new millennium) and in his transformation from “urban” to “urbane” blackness—exemplified by scenes in which Hayes changes the music in Pope’s apartment from classical to hip-hop and when he is “taught” to function in high
society during an etiquette boot camp given by the CIA. Extratextually, one can
hardly believe that Rock, the usually self-aware cultural critic, is playing Hayes,
a sort of urban bumpkin, who spends “much of [the film] being jittery, dysfunctional and perpetually frightened in the manner of Mantan Moreland’s
Birmingham Brown roles in dozens of 1940s Charlie Chan movies.”7 Despite
the sprinkling of controversy-free comic bits from Rock’s act (as Hayes playing
Pope, he renounces the latter’s antimeat stance: “Hell, I’ll eat a pig’s ass if you
cook it right”), the cynicism, social, and political savvy, and the razor-sharp
wit—the qualities that made him desirable as a costar in this high profile, bigbudget Jerry Bruckheimer project—are diluted beyond recognition in a narrative where Jake’s intellectual promise is signified more by his ability to play chess
and scalp tickets simultaneously than in his (questionably successful) masquerade as his buttoned-down Ivy League secret-operative twin. As one review
simply stated: “This is the kind of movie that Chris Rock the comedian would
make fun of.”8
While the fish-out-of-water film may seem to problematize the black
comedian’s efforts to interject both his comic persona and some degree of cultural specificity into his screen roles, this is not always the case. In Kevin Smith’s
independent film Dogma (1999), Chris Rock plays a fish-out-of-water among
fish-out-of-water as Rufus, the thirteenth apostle. Without the expectation of
the vast audience pool of a blockbuster, there is more room for Rock to incorporate his comic persona into the role.
Rock plays a supporting role to renegade angels (Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck) who attempt to use a loophole in church dogma to reenter heaven.
Operating as the film’s philosophical center in a tone very much akin to the
comic’s stand-up rants, Rock’s Rufus tells people what they need to know. Rufus
agrees to join the holy crusade to save the world, of course, but also to set the
record straight—Jesus was black. When fellow holy crusaders scoff at this revelation, Rufus puts the error into a sociohistorical context: “Between the time
when He established the faith and the Church started to officially organize, the
powers that be decided that, while the message of Christ was integral, the fact
that he was black was a detriment. So, all renderings were ordered to be Eurocentric, even though the brother was blacker than Jesse.” Rufus allows Rock’s
comic voice to resonate in the character’s lines. As the black martyr in this
multicultural motley crew, Rock’s impeccable comedic timing is well matched
by the profane language and scatological moralizing of Smith’s film.9 In this case
the black comedian’s stage and screen persona are integrated into film comedy
without being diluted beyond recognition. One wonders whether the black
comic’s ability to continue to engage issues of race (and cultural specificity) as
directly on film as he does in stand-up routine is dependent upon his remain-
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ing outside of the big-budget studio mother lode of crossover success or, as will
be discussed later in this chapter, in cinematic vehicles over which he (or she),
as a result of industrial clout or individual initiative, has a significant degree of
creative control.
Come di e s of Color-Code d Color Blindne s s
By the mid-nineties, in the wake of the backlash against multiculturalism, a
new subgenre emerges: the comedies of color-coded color blindness.These are
not aspirational integrationist tales (the stories of “movin’ on up”); rather, they
are cinematic versions of The Cosby Show: stories of those people who were
already living the American Dream. Into this subgenre enter the kinder, gentler
(and “bad box office” tamed) Eddie Murphy. Even though The Nutty Professor
(1996) and its sequel, The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps (2000) heralded
Murphy’s return to box office prominence, Dr. Doolittle (1998) is most emblematic of his transformation into this new “mature” iteration of Eddie. This film
not only supplies the most extreme sublimation of the controversial aspects of
the black comic persona into an unproblematic integrationist fantasy but also
marks Murphy’s entry into the family comedy genre. Furthermore, the way that
race is incorporated or erased in this film demonstrates the marketability of
color-coded color blindness. Two principal changes are made in remaking the
1967 film—it is nonmusical and a black actor plays the title role. Despite the
casting of Murphy, the context of the narrative does not engage black culture
or identity in any direct or significant manner. Doolittle’s “gift” of talking to the
animals not only becomes a mark of difference but also operates as a signifier
for identity. The lost “gift” that Doolittle had “unlearned” as a result of his
father’s desire for him to “fit in” reemerges at the point when both his autonomy and his identity are being challenged. A huge corporate Health Maintenance Organization is seeking to buy out Doolittle’s practice at the same time
that he is striving to teach his daughter to “fit in.” After Doolittle nearly runs
over a dog, Lucky (voiced by Norm MacDonald), his senses are restored. Once
again he is able to talk to the animals and to express his own “individuality.”
Race is both inherent in and absent from the film, with Doolittle’s
extended family (including wife, two daughters, and father) supplying the only
black faces in major roles. While actors of color are among the star-studded
cavalcade of celebrity voices (most notably Chris Rock, as his daughter’s pet
guinea pig, Rodney), the story is set in a predominantly white liberal world in
San Francisco. The notion of a white liberal setting is central to the film’s elision of race.While one might argue that race motivates Doolittle’s father (Ossie
Davis) to prescribe conformity as a means of gaining access to the American
Dream, it is never explicitly mentioned.Within the context of a cautionary tale
that warns against homogeneity (figured as the corporate entity or enforced
conformity), racial identity and questions of difference are translated into the
“special gift” of hearing animals speak. Questions about race are thus displaced
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12. Murphy consults with a monkey in Dr. Doolittle (1998). Directed by Betty Thomas.
Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from 20th Century Fox.
onto issues of the “uniqueness” of individual identity and the struggle between
the individual (small-business owner) and the corporation. Doolittle’s gift,
which could mark him as Other, is constructed not as an obstacle to achievement
or assimilation but rather as a type of uniqueness (read both rugged individualism and suburban conformity) that has consistently been part of the mythology
of the identifiable American Dream. In this way racial identity, coded as uniqueness, slides past Otherness into the realm of a mythic, idealized middle-classness.
The clear villain of this film is the corporation, personified by the HMO president (Peter Boyle), an embodiment of soul-less homogeneity and mediocrity.
The film’s plot may reward the return of the individual’s uniqueness (Doolittle
opens a dual practice for animals and humans, which will undoubtedly be a
lucrative one), but it is also in the business of smoothing out individual difference. On one hand, one might argue that it is especially ironic that a tale that
professes to celebrate the expression of individual gifts requires Murphy to
dilute his stand-up persona almost beyond recognition. On the other, the
family-friendly persona that Murphy employs might be seen as the logical
extension of an older comic actor—one far removed from the edginess and
energy of stand-up performance—and the father of five children.
Indeed, Murphy’s stand-up comic persona plays only an ancillary role in
many of his most recent films: as the voice of the puny dragon with codependence issues in Disney’s animated feature Mulan (1998), which he reincarnates
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in donkey form for the not-so-subtle Disney-bashing DreamWorks product,
Shrek (2001) and Shrek II (2004); as the mild-mannered Sherman Klump, his
megalomaniacal alter ego Buddy Love, and the entire Klump clan in The Nutty
Professor films; and, as action star Kit Ramsey and his geeky brother Jiff in
Bowfinger (1999). Interestingly, some of these characters seem to quote different
impersonations from Murphy’s old act: the Klumps, for example, appear to be
refugees from his family cookout material.Yet only the “posse”-laden Ramsey
and the hypersexualized Buddy conflate the onstage and offstage public personae of the young Murphy and feed directly from the attitude (if not the content) of the Raw years—and these figures are played as parody. Even in Murphy’s
recent attempts to recapture the “edgier” side of action comic fare—with the
egomaniacal Kelly Robinson, the boxing champ and temporary secret agent of
I-Spy (2002), and the constantly posturing, aspiring actor/television detective,
Trey Sellars, of Showtime (2002)—his performances seem to be self-conscious
impersonations of his former, more fully articulated, comedic incarnations. As
New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell bemoans in his review of I-Spy, “Mr.
Murphy is still doing the all-id hostility of Buddy Love, the swampy-depths alter
ego of ‘The Nutty Professor.’”10 Murphy’s performance of black identity
through machismo appears to have been thoroughly domesticated.11 Nonetheless, one must question whether Murphy’s new comedic persona is a kinder,
softer iteration and his audience is primed not for the swaggering audaciousness
of Delirious but for the delightful safety of Shrek’s “Donkey” and “Doolittle.” In
Daddy Day Care (2003) his character, Charlie Hinton, the beleaguered “every
dad” who ultimately embraces the role of professional “Mr. Mom,” serves to
codify the preferred (read bankable) Murphy persona for the new millennium.
In Murphy’s Hinton the profane and culturally specific aspects of his stand-up
are replaced by a postracial fantasy in which race is not a problem at all. As Tom
Sherak, a partner in Revolution Studios, which produced Daddy Day Care for
Sony, so clearly articulates: “Eddie Murphy is Bill Cosby. . . . People who grew
up with the edgy Eddie Murphy, they’re older now and parents, but they still
want to see him. He’s not the urban kid anymore, he’s a grown-up, a good father
and family man, and he makes these movies that appeal to families.”12 In these
films, as far as his big-screen persona is concerned, the “urban” has been traded
for the urbane: in the struggle for the comic soul of the new family-friendly
Murphy, Cosby, rather than Pryor, is the victor. Furthermore, the new Murphy
is, in some ways, the antithesis of the stand-up/cinematic personae of Pryor,
who, whatever the absurd premise of the film, keeps more than a passing aura
of Pryorness in his work.
While, on some level, Murphy’s G-rated (or PG-rated) film comedies revisit
the domestic comedy for the big screen, the absence of race recognition in the
narratives is striking—particularly when one takes into consideration other bigscreen black family comedies that, while not foregrounding race, still endeavor
to deal with issues of cultural specificity. This new spate of “urban suburban”
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comedies (from Barbershop to Johnson Family Vacation) presents narratives that are
neither integrationist nor separatist—and features actors associated with niched
black cultural production (like Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer).13 In
Murphy’s family films the rich cultural coding that often shades the black comic
persona has been thinned out (or redistributed) in ways that allow them to be
easily folded into a mainstream cinematic milieu.
In several films over the course of his career, Murphy has channeled aspects
of his personae (from his smack talking, smirking form of machismo to his carefully crafted comic mimicry) into a variety of characters.This fragmentation can
be seen in Bowfinger, as well as in The Nutty Professor and The Nutty Professor II:
The Klumps.While the latter offered an “elephantine showcase for Murphy’s virtuosity” and a “Murphy, Murphy, Murphy world,” the comic actor first dabbled
in fragmentation almost a decade earlier. It was in Coming to America (1988), the
comic’s last big box office success before his 1996 cinematic “comeback,” that
Murphy first revealed his ability to subsume his comic personae in service to a
very conventional comedic paradigm. Although exploring convergences
between the Murphy of The Nutty Professor series and the original kinder, gentler iteration in Coming to America might enable us to trace the trajectory of
Murphy’s shifting comic personae, there is greater significance to the earlier cinematic constructions—and their relationship to Hollywood comedy. Coming to
America affords an interesting case study in that it demonstrates how each subgenre supplies a different point of entry for the black comic into mainstream
comedy and varying degrees of control over the ways in which his or her comic
persona is mobilized as a representational default for blackness. In fact, one
might even argue that the 1988 romantic comedy can be seen as a conflation of
the fish-out-of-water comedies, those of color-coded color blindness, and the
cultural comedies with creative control. As a big-budget romantic comedy—
with director Jon Landis at the helm, whose early films, Animal House (1978),
The Blues Brothers (1980), and Trading Places (1983) were star turns for Murphy
as well as for SNL veterans John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, and with a story
penned by the film’s black star, Coming to America—and Murphy’s new star
power—were anomalous for the eighties. In all likelihood the film could not
have been made without Murphy’s industrial status, which in turn yielded him
a modicum of creative control. The shift from being a star who has his pick of
projects to star who gets his projects made represents a significant movement up
the industrial food chain. On one hand, Murphy’s choice to throw his new
industrial clout into a film that is fundamentally an updated 1930s romantic
comedy—a PG-13 version of the runaway heiress tale within a black context
with a runaway heir—could be seen as a risky endeavor. The story centers on
the quest of Prince Akeem, the future ruler of Zamunda (a country that embodies a storybook notion of the continent of Africa as idyllic, exotic, and resplendent) who takes the forty days allowed him to sow his wild oats before
returning to an arranged marriage, to find true love (and intellectual compati-
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bility) in Queens, New York.14 As will be discussed in greater detail later in this
chapter, one of the hallmarks of creative control in the cultural comedies is the
reframing of a classical Hollywood genre narrative in an African American
context.
One might assert that the story of a Nubian prince in Queens, which also
fits squarely within the fish-out-of-water genre, represented an industrial slamdunk—given Murphy’s prior successes with the subgenre. However, as film
critic David Ansen noted, the film is perhaps “more interesting as a career move
than as a movie.”15 In reality Murphy, who was at the top of the comedy’s
A-list, with a string of hit films including the record-shattering concert film
Raw (1987), took only a mitigated risk. Humble, innocent, and sweetly earnest,
the prince marked a significant departure for Murphy, and, as the romantic
center of the film, Akeem is imminently likable but not a memorable, comic
character.While the prince was not Axel, the traces of Murphy’s comic personae
(from SNL, stand-up, and the BHC series)—metered out amongst brief supporting roles—were present to showcase his prowess as comic character actor
and, arguably, to satiate (and reindoctrinate) his fan base.The search for sociopolitical content in contemporary romantic comedy may yield ambiguous results;
however, the analysis of this particular vehicle as the nexus of the transformation of Murphy’s comic personae speaks to the sociocultural and industrial
moments, as well as their relationship to the film itself and its subgenres. As a
comedy of color-coded color blindness, Coming to America’s elision of race is
intriguing.The cinematic milieu of Coming to America is fundamentally black—
and, as such, the actual discussion of race is displaced by the unproblematic
engagement of class and nation. Although the cultural differences between the
mythical Zamundans and African Americans are depicted—primarily through
the opulence to which Akeem and his aristocratic companion, Semmi (Arsenio
Hall), were accustomed in Zamunda—the film’s diversity is rooted in class.The
class delineations are represented by three male characters: the middle class by
the local fast-food king, Akeem’s boss, and father to his love interest, Lisa (Shari
Headley), played by John Amos as a self-aggrandizing social climber; the nouveau riche by Eriq LaSalle, the narcissistic heir-apparent to the Soul-Glo [read
Jheri-Kurl] fortune, and Akeem’s rival; and, the aristocracy by the king of
Zamunda, portrayed by James Earl Jones, as both supreme potentate and concerned dad.The foibles of each of these characters (and their social class ilk) are
portrayed in broad strokes.This is neither the vehicle nor the genre for genuine
social critique; rather, the film functions as a dual celebration of the black
presence (read actors working) in a big-budget comedy and the cinematic creation of a mythical African/African American milieu of prosperity, safety, and
promise.
The film, and Murphy’s creative input, does represent the potential and the
promise for a more forceful black presence in Hollywood. Moreover, Coming to
America, along with Robert Townsend’s scathingly funny tale of racism and the
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plight of the contemporary black actor in Hollywood Shuffle (1987), and Keenen
Ivory Wayans’s star-studded blaxploitation parody I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka!
(1988), mark the emergence of the Black Pack in Hollywood. In this industrial
moment—a year before Spike Lee became a sociopolitical cinematic force with
Do the Right Thing (1989) and three before John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood
(1991) would start the stream of ghetto/gangsta melodrama/morality plays—
writer, director, actors like Townsend,Wayans, and Murphy used film comedy as
social discourse on black culture and the African American condition.
Unlike the majority of Murphy’s work in the eighties, Townsend and
Wayans employ multiple culturally coded satirical moments in their films—like
classically trained black actors demonstrating the process of “blacking it up” for
their coveted “junkie” roles in Hollywood Shuffle. The virtual roll call of blaxploitation stars (including Bernie Casey and Jim Brown) as middle-aged urban
heroes in a literal fight against the (white) Man, Mr. Big, the crime boss of the
ghetto in I’m Gonna Get You, Sucka! provides additional spectatorial pleasure for
those “down” enough to recognize the stars’ cultural cachet. These moments
depend on some degree of cultural differentiation—an audience with black
popular cultural savvy—and, in so doing, act as comedic social discourse at a
moment when the black audience is being (re)discovered, on the cusp of the
niche marketing and narrowcasting of the netlet era and the explosion of hiphop into the popular culture mainstream.While, arguably, the ideological work
being done in these films has a greater critical bite than Murphy’s genre films,
the significance of the latter’s ability to “go wide” cannot be underestimated in
terms of the industry’s willingness to make black-oriented film. Nonetheless,
these films, penned by, helmed by, and starring black comic actors, established a
creative community working in concert and afforded models for the next wave
of comics turned cinematic creators.16
In each of the aforementioned texts race, genre, and history (social, political, and industrial) are at play in a new wave of cultural comedies with creative
control. Over the next two decades the presence of these comedies continued
to make sporadic appearances in the cinematic mainstream. During the early
nineties, while black-oriented dramatic films depicted the gritty (and gang
inflected) experiences of black urban life, the cultural comedies of creative control acted as their middle-class (and upper-middle-class) comedic counterparts.
These comedies that emerged early in the decade, as well as those that have
appeared in the new millennium, played with genre to capture the desired reinscription of the black experience in contemporary film comedy. Moreover, by
carving out spaces for both their comic personae and their selected black cultural milieu within the context of previously established genres, Rock and
Murphy became significant players in this particular genre game. Additionally,
the examination of the passage of their comic personae into these films reveals
the convergences and divergences between the intent and content of their distinct reimaginings of contemporary and classical Hollywood comedy.
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Cultural Come die s with Creative Cont rol
Undeniably, having creative control over one’s films allows any actor greater
mobility in molding the way that his or her cinematic persona is conceived. On
one hand, the promise of creative control in the film work of a black comic
turned “hyphenate” signifies the opportunity for black self-representation
within a genre where, historically, socioculturally regressive and essentialized
African American images have abounded—from the direct reincarnations of
minstrelsy like Mantan Moreland’s eye-popping, body-quaking “I’se afraid”
performances in the already problematic Charlie Chan films to the “token”
presence of “the black guy” in the teen comedies of the eighties sprinkled
throughout John Hughes’s oeuvre. On the other hand, the comic’s persona,
whether onstage or onscreen, must possess some degree of idiosyncrasy, thus
problematizing the notion that he or she can be seen as representative of the
race—which he or she undoubtedly will be. When black comics, like Murphy
or Rock, attain the degree of status required to set their own creative agenda,
expectations (and the stakes) are high. Often the discussion of the black comic
persona being diluted in the movement from stand-up to screen is rooted in the
fact that they do not have actual creative control over their vehicles—making
the notion of “for us, by us” in filmmaking highly desirable. After all, the transformation to a “hyphenate” (like “writer-director”) is not necessarily a stretch
for the comic: he or she has been fundamentally a writer-performer throughout his or her career. Long before Murphy and Rock made their presence
known cinematically, they were writing material for either stand-up or sketch
performances. That’s the good part.
Given that neither a sketch nor a set is a screenplay, and that sustaining the
“funny” onscreen is an arduous endeavor, Rock and Murphy are faced with a
significant challenge—particularly when there is an additional representational
burden placed on the work—as both film and black cultural production. Thus,
regardless of whether or not these films go down in history as “classic comedies,” Murphy’s and Rock’s comedies with creative control reveal the desire to
expand the niche of the black comic presence in American film comedy—in
terms of the stories of blackness that can and have been told.Yet creative control is not a panacea for either the loss of comic edge or the dearth of progressive representations of blackness.
By examining film comedies that were written and/or directed by their
star, Murphy and Rock, respectively, one can begin to see how the translation
of the black comic persona onto the big screen can be just as problematic, even
when the creative team behind the camera is African American. Both Murphy’s
creative trifecta (writer-director-star) and Rock’s first venture as writer-star
exemplify a desire to capture a distinct black sociocultural moment: Harlem
Nights (1989), the former’s Harlem heyday gangster comedy, and CB4 (1993),
the latter’s parodic shout-out to the explosion of gangsta rap (and, by extension,
hip-hop) in the early nineties. Regardless of whether one might question either
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the aspects of the era that the comic-writer-filmmaker has chosen to foreground or the genre through which they have chosen to explore the moment,
both of these films act as cinematic valentines to richly textured moments of
black culture. In some ways these particular comedies can be seen as For Us By
Us films: although the genre may be familiar to the cinematic mainstream, the
cultural content is purposefully niched for audiences attuned to black culture.
Murphy’s desire to do a period piece was, arguably, motivated by the types
of black historical fictions that had come out of Hollywood in the recent past;
from Sounder to The Color Purple, film tales of black survival and spiritual growth
were not the stuff of which comedy is made—nor did they tell stories of black
success coded in classical Hollywood generic conventions. Harlem Nights functions as multiple homage to the gangster genre, to Harlem, and, perhaps most
significant, to two of Murphy’s comic inspirations, Richard Pryor and Redd
Foxx. In his article on the “three generations of comedy” in Harlem Nights,
Walter Leavy states that Murphy made clear that if he had not made this film,
no one else would have brought these comics together:“Hollywood wasn’t trying to hook us up. But I think it’s historic that I get to work with these brothers. The privilege of working with Richard and Redd has been the greatest
reward of my career.”17 The film, with its “dream cast,” was clearly a big-budget
labor of love for Murphy.The story seems a familiar permutation of the genre:
Quick (Murphy) and his older wiser mentor, Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) must
outsmart the evil mob boss with an elaborate con in order to save themselves
and their friends. One might even describe it as The Sting inflected by blaxploitation machismo. What is striking about the film is the way in which the
performance of a genre archetype, the young “hot head,” rarely affords Murphy
any spaces for humor. In fact, neither Murphy’s Quick nor Pryor’s Sugar Ray
carry the comedy in this film. Harlem Nights boasts three generations of black
comedy; however, only one generation—the oldest—lives up to that promise.
Channeling a touch of “Sanfordesque” spirit, Redd Foxx’s cantankerous sightimpaired croupier, Benne, along with Della Reese’s Vera, the no-nonsense
madam who’s in charge of “the girls” working out of Sugar’s, supply some of
the film’s funniest moments with their constant, albeit loving, banter.18
The choice to keep “Pryorness” out of the construction of Sugar Ray may
have been designed to supply the comic with one of his most suave film roles
(a distinct departure from his most recent screen time, the broad, buddy comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil with Gene Wilder) but left Pryor playing the wise,
old, virtual straight man.The moments when Murphy’s comic persona actually
makes cameo appearances are among the film’s most misogynistic. An argument
over money with Reese’s Vera is punctuated by his signature laugh, before verbal sparring becomes physical—it culminates with Quick shooting her in the
foot, with the rationale that he told her to “shut up.” Replete with missed
opportunities to engage the personae of these black comedy heavyweights,
Harlem Nights maintains numerous paradigmatic allegiances—to gangster/caper
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13. Three generations of black comedy in Harlem Nights (1989). Directed by Eddie
Murphy. Left to right: Eddie Murphy (as Quick), Richard Pryor (as Sugar Ray), Della Reese
(as Vera), Redd Foxx (as Bennie Wilson). Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from Paramount Pictures.
comedies like The Sting, to the spirit of blaxploitation films (where the black
man can actually beat the odds and get one over on “the Man”), and to, albeit
elliptically, the historical aura of 1930s Harlem.
From the meticulously costumed integrated assemble of patrons at Club
Sugar Ray, the speakeasy, which acts as the film’s visual and narrative centerpiece, to the soundtrack featuring vintage Duke Ellington, the mise-en-scène of
Murphy’s gangster comedy creates an idealized vision of lush uptown nightlife,
which, like Coming to America’s African kingdom, makes for a nostalgic vision of
the way that, on some level, things never were.The film engages the era’s racial
politics in fairly simplistic ways: blacks and whites frequent the popular night
spot, but the harassment of corrupt police (Danny Aiello’s Phil Cantone) and
the strong-arm tactics of the white mob boss Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner)
are reserved for the African American entrepreneurs. In this world, where all the
heroes are black, more intellectually adept, and, regardless of their vices, morally
superior to their foes, and the villains are corrupt, easily manipulated, and all
white, the audience is provided with a black world recentered within a classical
Hollywood framework. Moreover, the creation of a world where black savvy
and style are privileged—and historically rooted—might even allow the film to
be viewed as a progressive representational text—if not for the film’s gender
politics.The previously mentioned sequence between Quick and Vera, as well as
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the former’s bedding and then killing of the film’s Creole femme fatale (and
Calhoune’s mistress) played by Jasmine Guy, exemplify how the film equates all
women with some form of sexual servitude, which can hardly be seen as liberatory construction.
Harlem Nights was not a big box office success: grossing roughly $61 million, it was Murphy’s least successful film comedy up to that point in his career
(even The Golden Child outgrossed it).The film was dismissed by reviewers like
Washington Post film critic Hal Hinson as “Murphy’s folly . . . a vanity production if ever there was one, launched on behalf of a star with vast amounts of
vanity to soothe. And it’s hard to imagine a more wrong-headed, aggressively
off-putting exercise in star ego.”19 Nonetheless, through the examination of this
film, and its classification as a cultural comedy with its star’s creative control, one
must ask—by shying away from familiar iterations of both Pryor’s and Murphy’s
comic personae and by constructing a film that conflates related but racially differentiated genres—whether the goal of “going wide” was ever genuinely a
motivating force in this project or whether Murphy’s vision to make a film with
the setting of 1930s Harlem as a character rather than a backdrop was designed
to be For Us By Us.
It was industrial clout that got Harlem Nights made, and, in actuality, it was
Murphy’s influence that allowed Rock to make his first For Us By Us film.
Murphy, who had given Rock his first break on television (Uptown Comedy
Express) and in film (Beverly Hills Cop II), approached Brian Grazer, the head of
Imagine Films and producer of Boomerang, about the project at the same time
that Nelson George, music journalist extraordinaire and cowriter of CB4, was
contacting his friend, producer Sean Daniel. In the end it was the combined
effort of Grazer and Daniel that was integral to getting CB4 made. “Brian and
I decided to join forces to support Chris and Nelson at Universal. The movie
deserved to get made. The material was original and raw and worth fighting
for.”20
Emblazoned on the cover of Nelson George’s insightful sociohistorical
analysis of the burgeoning musical movement, Hip Hop America (1998), there is
a quote from Chris Rock that begins, “I love hip hop more than I love my
mother.” Rock’s love of hip-hop, which is present in his later stand-up, television, and film work, can clearly be seen in CB4, a film that does for gangsta rap
what Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap did for metal. Rock and George created a
narrative that required not only knowledge of hip-hop but a love for it. CB4’s
film within a film is a “rapumentary” by A.White (Chris Elliot) chronicling the
rise of the “world’s most dangerous band,” the gangsta rap trio of MC Gusto aka
Albert Brown (Rock), Dead Mike aka Euripides Smalls (Allen Payne), and Stab
Master Arson aka Otis O. Otis (Deezer D).The story, which begins with a series
of testimonials from hip-hop glitterati, including gangsta rap royalty, Ice-T, IceCube, and Easy E, attesting to or questioning the group’s “hardcore” pedigree,
shifts gears after an attempted drive-by from the real gangsta from whom Brown
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had “borrowed” both his name and persona (played with testosterone-fueled
comic menace by Charlie Murphy) after he escapes from the actual Cell Block
4. Through the process of revealing the middle-class roots of CB4—Albert
Brown, as good and obedient son, Otis O. Otis, as the harried de facto head of
household for his numerous sisters and genial mother, and Euripides Smalls, as
the only genuinely struggling young brother in search of spirituality and black
consciousness—Rock and George’s story begs the question, “How gangsta are
the gangstas?” The hip-hop cultural savvy required to understand the significance of this question squarely posits CB4 as a For Us By Us film.21
In George’s and Rock’s script the translation of the “big and wild” elements
of the rap world takes place through the transformation of the film’s central trio
from middle-class kids to gangsta rappers. Depicted as a fashion and rhetoric
makeover, the “evolution” of the band speaks to the stereotypes of “gangstaness.”The physical image is changed with a weave, a Jheri-Kurl and prison work
shirts, t-shirts, and jeans (procured at the fence of a correctional facility). The
trio sits in character: Otis/Stab Master Arson, in backwards baseball hat, swigs
out of a 40 in a paper bag; Albert/Gusto, now gold-toothed, gold-chained,
adjusts his dark shades and black-knit cap; and Euripedes/Dead Mike (the only
non-Jheri-Kurled member of the trio) in dark bandana, arms crossed, doing his
best black-militant-inspired glare. However, it was Trustus Jones, the rap record
mogul, not the members of CB4, who articulates the band’s new rhetoric.
Before signing the group, Jones, who knows that CB4 has a gangsta veneer
rather than hardcore cred, does a sort of gangsta checklist, communicating what
he expects that they will be:
Trustus: I love the image. . . . I have a few questions. Do you cuss?
Gusto: Fuck, yea.
Trustus: Do you defile women with your lyrics?
CB4 [all nodding with enthusiastic assent]: Mmm-hmm.
Trustus [in a faux whisper]: Do you fondle your genitalia onstage?
Gusto: Whenever possible.
Trustus: Do you glorify violence and advocate the use of gu . . . [His question
is cut short by the sound of guns being readied as each CB4 member prepares his “piece” of choice]
Trustus: Okay, okay. Final question: do you guys respect anything?
CB4 [in unison]: Not a damn thing.
Trustus: You’ve got a deal. Welcome to the family.
While there are numerous instances that flaunt the popular conceptions of
rap, the comedy often resembles a series of thematically connected gag-driven
(rather than character-driven) sketches with a not-always-crystalline critical
agenda.The fact that the broadness of the comedy, its inherent raunchiness, and
its celebration of a certain degree of political incorrectness are deemed necessary to parody a genre that, to some extent, also does all of those things supplies
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contradictory ideological messages. For example, the film’s gender politics are
inconsistently regressive. While the objectification of women in rap videos is
explored through the conversation of two dancers who boast about the screen
time their body parts received (an “ass right behind MC Hammer’s head in
‘Can’t Touch This’” and a “left breast prominently featured in Eric B.’s last
video”), the women’s industrial complicity seems to elide the issue. Like many
other contemporary film parodies—from Blazing Saddles to Soul Plane—CB4 is
informed by masculine zeitgeist. The two (most) central female characters—
Sissy (Khandi Alexander), the entrepreneurial rap groupie who differentiates
herself from the “hip hop ho’s” due to her prized possession (an album of
polaroids of former rapper-lovers just before they begin engaging in oral sex),
which yields ongoing profits; and Daliha (Rachel True), the squeaky clean,
quasi-virginal embodiment of black middle-classness, whose sole role seems to
be not being Sissy—are constructed as madonna and whore.While neither could
be considered a leading role, Daliha receives significantly less screen time than
Sissy, which, arguably, is consistent with the genre being parodied.22
Nevertheless, for those not well-versed in hip-hop culture, the film’s
sporadic moments of biting critique, as well as most of the self-referential
humor, is lost. Neither Stoney Jackson’s Wacky-D send-up of M. C. Hammer’s
mainstream hit “Can’t Touch This,” shown as a video that, much to Brown’s dismay, is loved by his family and his girl, nor CB4’s performance of their theme
song, “Straight Outta Locash,” clearly a parody of N. W. A’s “Straight Outta
Compton” (which actually manages to be more profane than the original), will
have any resonance for an audience unaware of the source texts. As one review
noted:“Like those forms of parodic tribute, it assumes . . . a certain level of hipness. In other words, if you don’t know rap, forget about it, you’d do just as well
taking an SAT prepared by extra-terrestrials.”23 While CB4 takes great pains to
deal with the foibles of rap culture, it also lampoons the mainstream reaction to
the music, style, and content of hip-hop—as illustrated by the unabashed liberal
gushing of the documentary filmmaker, A. White (Chris Elliot), and the vitriolic attacks from Congressman Virgil Robinson (Phil Hartman), whose actions
are motivated less by the rabid fandom of his adolescent son (J. D. Daniels) than
by the political mileage that could be gained by a PMRC-like crusade.24 As a
result of Robinson’s campaign, the band is threatened with jail if they perform
their hit, “Sweat from My Balls”—which, of course, they do.25
The performance sequence provides an interesting mixture of parody and
tribute: after CB4, in prison garb and shackles, enter into the elaborate set with
a prison motif (complete with searchlights, barbed wire, white guards with guns,
and black prisoners inside cells), un-gold-chained Gusto and shirtless Dead
Mike kneel in their shackles; with lights swirling as though there has been a jailbreak, an authoritative voice resounds over the booming bass of the beats that
Stab Master Arson is spinning: “MC Gusto, Dead Mike and Stab Master Arson,
you have all been sentenced by the government of the United States of America
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to a life of poverty, ignorance and imprisonment in CELL BLOCK 4.” What
ever poignancy and resonance supplied by this operatic staging and the visual
image of a shackled, shirtless black man (in terms of the obvious relationship to
multiple forms of slavery) is quickly undermined when instead of launching
into a conscious rap credo, Dead Mike and MC Gusto, throw off their shackles,
singing “jump, jump” as the lead-in to “Sweat from My Balls.”The redirection,
or arguably, misdirection, that takes place in this sequence deliberately confronts
ideological inconsistencies of CB4’s politics by the juxtaposition of one image
of oppression (the justice/penal system) against another (blatant misogyny). Perhaps, not surprisingly, in the scenes around the abortive performance sequence,
one sees flashes of Rock’s witty and irreverent voice and also his fluid ideological positioning in statements made in passing. In one instance, Albert responds
to both Euripides’ and Otis’s questioning of the song’s controversial content, for
its questionable political agenda and its lack of family friendliness, by critiquing
not the legitimacy of their claims but rather the ways in which they had been
culturally manipulated to even ask the question:“One brother wants to be Malcolm X, the other one wants to be Richie Cunningham.” In another, after being
arrested for singing the verboten song, Rock as Albert, sitting in the paddy
wagon, can be heard railing against the racialized double standard at play in their
arrest:“answer me this, how come a rock group can bite the head off of pigeons,
nothing happens, but I’m getting ready to go to jail for doing a song about the
14. CB4 (1993). This Is Spinal Tap for gangsta rap. Directed by Tamra Davis. Allen Payne
(left) and Chris Rock. Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from Universal.
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sweat from my balls.” For the majority of the film, however, neither Albert
Brown nor his gangsta alter ego, MC Gusto provides strong articulations of
Rock’s comic persona.
One might argue that the diminishing of the comic persona was dictated
by the “mocumentary” format. Nearly a decade earlier, in the source text for
faux “rocumentary” This Is Spinal Tap (1984), one of the parody’s greatest
successes was the translation of metal’s iconic personae into the fading metal
band; conflating myriad rockers from Black Sabbath’s Ozzie Osbourne to Led
Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Harry Shearer’s Derek Smalls, Michael McKean’s
David St Hubbins, and Christopher Guest’s Nigel Tufnel provided the comic
embodiments of the musical genre.While some might argue the parody of CB4
has not gained the cult status of the 1984 film, it did extend the notion of genre,
driving the construction of personae in concrete ways: after all, Rock’s trio were
performing a performance of gansta-ness. Often, the construction of their
“hard” personae, utilized to legitimize their position in the rap world, was in
confrontational dialogue with the people who the rappers were “in real life.”
Amidst the movement, back and forth, between the earnestness of Albert
Brown and the overblown insolence of MC Gusto, the narrative did not leave
space for the witty and acerbic rants of comic Rock’s persona. Moreover, at this
point in his career Rock’s comic voice—the scathing sociocultural critique, the
unrelenting rants against hypocrisy (inside and outside of the black community), and even the throaty guffaw and devilish grin that punctuate his most biting jokes series—was not yet established.26 Nonetheless, Rock and George had
made clear choices in CB4: rather than centering the film on Rock’s burgeoning comic persona, their script utilized insider (cultural) humor to parody a
genre for which the writers had great affection. In so doing, they created a culturally niched text that explored rap’s adolescence, grounded in the cultural and
genre conventions of hip-hop. Like Harlem Nights, CB4 was a studio product,
coded for a particular culturally savvy audience, whose star’s persona was subsumed by his character’s genre-driven imperatives. In considering the shortcomings of these two For Us By Us films, one must consider whether it was the
cultural and/or racial specificity of the comedies’ milieu or the absence of
Murphy and Rock’s comic personae that was a greater impediment to box
office (and crossover) success.
Enamored with different conventions of gangster and gangsta genre, in film
and music respectively, Harlem Nights and CB4 were films that, while endeavoring to create culturally specific comedic texts, gave only passing attention to the
comic personae of their stars. Furthermore, in absenting the power of those personae, the creative control of the stars was wasted on vehicles that lacked the
comedic legs to stand up as genre films (gangster and mockumentary) in their
own right. Arguably, Murphy’s and Rock’s ventures into classical Hollywood
comedy presented different problems and possibilities than Harlem Nights and
CB4: both succeeded in placing their comic personae, as well as contemporary
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constructions of black culture, at the center of the narrative, while achieving
varying degrees of popular and critical acclaim. In Reginald Hudlin’s Boomerang
Murphy provided the story for an eighties hypersexualized reenvisioning of the
notoriously chaste sixties comedies. Murphy’s entry into romantic comedy
hinged on a cross-racial audience’s willingness to accept the conversion of his
action comedy film persona into the idyllic milieu common to the genre, a
gamble given the historical exclusion of black actors as romantic leads in the
“boy-meets-girl” stories of mainstream American cinema.
“This is the story of a famous dog . . .” are the first words heard in
Boomerang, and when Murphy’s Marcus Graham emerges from the elevator in
the swanky eighties chic office building, it is clear who will be playing the dog.
As Murphy moves through the office building, we see Marcus as the man that
every man wants to be and every woman wants to do: every woman’s greeting
drips with desire, and every man is trying to gain charisma points, if only by
being near him. Marcus’s direction to his secretary to send a single rose to a list
of women with the “usual message,” “thinking only of you,” solidifies his construction as a “player.” His heroic “dog” status is further underscored by his
lunchtime conversation with his two best friends, Tyler and Gerard, played by
Martin Lawrence and David Allen Grier.27
Tyler: There’s a whole world out there we don’t know about. Like the letters
in Penthouse Forum? Stuff like that never happen to me.
Gerard: Stuff like that never happens to anyone—except Marcus.
Marcus: The only reason stuff like that happens to me is because I pay atten-
tion to women.Y’all don’t pay attention.
For Marcus, “paying attention” means knowing your prey. His mode of seduction (his self-proclaimed “art form”) is simply a means for sexual conquest.With
Marcus ensconced in the position of sexual sensei, his buddies function as part
commentary of black masculinity and part rearticulation of traditional roles of
the supporting male in a romantic comedy; while Tyler and Gerard may engage
in banter akin to “playing the dozens” with each other, Marcus is “above” this
verbal volleying; in fact, they are constantly singing Marcus’s praises.28
Marcus Graham is the eighties equivalent of Hudson’s Jerry Webster in
Lover Come Back (1961), the playboy ad man who wins the love (and virtue) of
his virginal competitor, Doris Day’s Carol Templeton, through duplicitous
means but then, in order to win her back, must actually become the virtuous
man he pretended to be. Although the details of the two ad-themed romantic
comedies differ, both are stories of the “dog’s” comeuppance. The love triangle
that develops between Marcus; his boss, Jacqueline Broyer (Robin Givens), who
acts as the female version of a “player”; and Angela Lewis (Halle Berry), his subordinate, the mildly Afrocentric “good girl,” who becomes Marcus’s moral compass, plays within the parameters of the romantic comedy formula. For this
particular “dog,” Marcus, a cross between the old-school construction of the
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“ladies’ man” and the contemporary construction of an upscale “player,” his
comeuppance is both personal and professional.
Marcus’s infatuation with his female counterpart grows, even as Jacqueline
treats him in the duplicitous (and objectifying) manner that he had treated
countless other women; as Marcus gets in touch with his feminine side (being
cast as the “wronged woman”), his ability to retain his swaggering machismo
disappears, as exemplified by the ending of the first liaison with his boss/lover.
Marcus awakens to see Jacqueline making one of his patented exits (the halfhearted excuse of an early meeting and a quick noncommittal kiss good-bye),
and in an act of uncharacteristic modesty, he pulls the covers to his chest and
softly intones, “Call me.” Not surprisingly, the emasculated Marcus becomes
progressively less able to perform in the world of work. In this triangulated boymeets-girl(s) story, Marcus finds redemption in his friendship-turned-relationship with Angela, with whom he finds renewed creative focus and belief in his
abilities, and whom he rejects (for an abortive return to Jacqueline) only to pursue again for the requisite happy ending.
The construction of both women in Boomerang could easily provide significant fodder for the analysis of black women’s representations in contemporary
African American film. Jacqueline Broyer’s treatment of Marcus reflects a certain
moral relativism regarding sex and success—which gains resonance given audiences’ extratextual knowledge of Robin Givens’s alleged man-eater status after
her much-discussed, short-lived marriage to Mike Tyson. In addition, the luminously lovely Halle Berry is cast as Angela, the “every sistah,” who, despite
moments of actual agency (when she becomes a professional force in her own
right after her breakup with Marcus), ultimately exists to be acted on by
Marcus. However, Boomerang is Murphy’s movie—he is the famous dog, and it’s
his story, not that of a couple.
Boomerang is by no means an ideal romantic comedy, nor is it the worst
example of the genre produced in the early nineties. One might fault Murphy’s
story or Hudlin’s direction for the fact that Boomerang did not give the mammoth box office numbers that many of the comic’s previous films had generated.29 One must also consider that in 1992 the portrayal of a thriving black
upper-middle-class milieu, which was viewed by a majority of Americans on
Thursday nights in The Cosby Show (the centerpiece of Must See TV for much
of the previous decade), was not commonplace in American cinema. Released
during a period when films dealing with black men were predominantly films
from the hood (for example, Boyz n the Hood [1991], Juice [1992], and Menace II
Society [1993]), Boomerang preceded the spate of black-women-centered middleclass melodramedies later in the decade like Waiting to Exhale (1995) and Soul
Food (1997). Earl Calloway of the New Philadelphia Courier described Boomerang
as “a romantic comedy that has style and offers a great contrast to most of the
African-American oriented films that have been produced in the last decade.”30
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15. The “pup” and the “dog”: Chris Rock (left, as Bony T) and Eddie Murphy (as Marcus
Graham) in Boomerang (1992). Directed by Reginald Hudlin. Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from Paramount Pictures.
Given this industrial reality and, arguably, the ways that varying audiences
were “ready” to see Eddie on the big screen, the critique of Murphy’s romantic
leading man role in the colorized and updated sixties romantic comedy also
speaks to the de facto prohibition for a black comic (or any black actor for that
matter) to be the boy who gets the girl in a mainstream romantic comedy. As
previously stated, in both the fish-out-of-water and color-coded color blindness
comedies, Murphy enjoyed enormous crossover success. When constructed as
an anomalous figure in a sociocultural milieu only tangentially connected to
reality—a Detroit cop in Beverly Hills, an African prince in Queens, or a former executive running a rainbow coalition day care center—Murphy is consistently embraced by the mainstream. Indeed, it seems as though the black comic
actor is only afforded a space in comedies with romance when a broad comic
premise is foregrounded: whether it is Murphy in a fat suit (and multiple other
disguises) in The Nutty Professor films or Martin Lawrence in drag for a majority
of Big Momma’s House. However, drastic departures from those formulae—
namely the attempts to construct Murphy as a conventional leading man
(regardless of genre) have yielded inconsistent results as illustrated by the
strikingly disparate reactions to Murphy’s first genuine attempt at a romantic
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comedy. Although it would be reductive to say that the black entertainment
media praised Boomerang and the mainstream press panned it, the most unforgiving negative reviews came from the critics belonging to the latter group.
Some of it was fairly mild: Janet Maslin’s disappointment in the fact that “the
person to disrupt the status quo in an Eddie Murphy Movie was Eddie Murphy. But in this new role Mr. Murphy becomes part of the establishment he
once made fun of.”31 In contrast, Calloway, the film critic for a black paper,
asserts that this construction of Murphy as part of “the establishment” is what is
so significant about the film: “he is an African American executive and has
everything he wants . . . something one hardly sees in movies”; and Calloway
lauded the comic actor’s concern “that the character, while maintaining professionalism, should reflect [an actual] African American.”32
While one might argue whether Marcus should be lauded for sleeping with
an aging diva (played by Eartha Kitt) in order to (unsuccessfully) secure his promotion and position at the agency, Murphy provides a black male professional
who is both hypersexualized and hypercapable. The “hypersexual” nature of
Murphy’s persona inspires reviewer Peter Travers’s ire. Travers begins his vitriolic review by attacking the notion that Boomerang was Murphy’s attempt to
“make amends for the relentless misogyny of his recent films” and ends with a
critique of the PG-13-ness of its cinematic depiction of sex:“for all the sex talk
. . . there is very little nudity.The only thing naked is Murphy’s vanity. . . .What
Murphy is doing isn’t acting, it’s masturbation.”33 The vehemence of Travers’s
barbs stands in opposition to several critics (in both the black and mainstream
press) who viewed Boomerang as marking the emergence of “a new maturity for
Murphy, which leaves the loudmouth behind and introduces an actor willing to
play on a level playing field with his peers.”34 While one can argue the merits
of each of these positions on Boomerang, and the multiple subjectivities involved
in the processes of reviewing African American films, the one thing that is indisputable is the fact that, until recently, no African American actor has emerged
as a romantic comedy leading man in a mainstream American comedy. (An
arguable exception to the rule,Will Smith’s Hitch [2005] was given a lukewarm
box office reception.) Given Murphy’s crossover success, one might think he
was the black man to do it. That was not the case. After Boomerang Murphy’s
leading man roles were few and fundamentally unsuccessful (remember The
Adventures of Pluto Nash). Murphy had to return to the role of the anomaly in
the mainstream comedy in order to receive the full mainstream embrace—or he
had to become Cosby.
While Murphy’s foray into romantic comedy proved problematic for aesthetic and sociocultural, as well as industrial, reasons, Rock’s Down to Earth and
Head of State, acting as literal and figurative remakes, sought to posit revered
populist Hollywood comedic narratives in an African American context.While
Rock had become a screen presence in supporting roles, 2001 provided his first
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opportunity to “open” a film: Paramount’s Down to Earth. Arguably, the comic
potential was great, with Rock doing double duty as writer and star in a film
directed by Chris and Paul Weitz, the white boy-wonders responsible for the
American Pie films (1999, 2001, 2003). This remake of Warren Beatty’s Heaven
Can Wait (1978)—itself a remake of Here Comes Mister Jordan (1941)—features
Rock as Lance Barton, a stand-up comedian who dies before he can “kill” at
Harlem’s Apollo Theater and is then reincarnated in the body of a murdered
fifty-something white millionaire, Charles Wellington. The question of
whether or not the uncompromising stand-up persona of Rock would translate into a PG-13 Hollywood vehicle was answered within the first twenty
minutes of the film: the answer was yes and no. Despite Rock’s characterization of the film’s humor as “race neutral,” cultural specificity inflects the
film throughout—particularly in terms of Lance/Wellington’s relationship to
popular culture and, of course, stand-up. Soon after his reincarnation as
Wellington, Lance requests a television in the mansion that has BET (Black
Entertainment Television). Later, the film presents alternating images of Lance
(tall, skinny, black man) and Wellington (short, pudgy, white) as he rides in the
Rolls, jamming to Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” while flashing the
three fingered sign for “Westside.”
Rock’s stand-up persona is omnipresent, with his act metered out over the
course of the film. Lance/Wellington’s first stand-up gig directly lifts the “black
mall vs. white mall” routine from Roll with the New (“there’s not shit in a black
mall except sneakers and baby clothes”) with the comic twist that such material is now voiced by an elderly white man—to a stunned reaction from the
club’s black audience. Coming from Rock, this routine serves as a critique of
corporate America’s perception of the black community as a collection of pregnant women and wannabe athletes.When it is delivered by Wellington, a privileged white male, the material is compromised—and the critique’s bite is
entirely negated. Rock’s act also informs the social conscience that Wellington
develops as he determines to save Brooklyn Community Hospital for the community, inspired by the urgings of the activist (and love interest) Sontee (Regina
King). His answer to the hospital board of directors regarding uninsured patients
is a tirade straight out of Bring the Pain: “Insurance . . . Insurance ain’t enough
for people. I don’t even know why they call it insurance. They should just call
it ‘in-case-shit-happens.’ I give a company money in case shit happen. Now if
nothing happens, shouldn’t I get my money back?”
With an opening-weekend take of $18 million and a finish in the number
two slot in domestic box office, Down to Earth promised to deliver crossover
success for Rock—but at a cost.35 As one critic noted, “Like many of Pryor’s
movies (Brewster’s Millions, The Toy), Down to Earth takes pains to soften and
bland out its star’s more scabrous characteristics.”36 Another reviewer simply
states that if “Mr. Rock’s fans . . . are going to want a movie with the same
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acidulous funkiness that he brings to his standup, they are not going to get
that.”37 Or, as a fellow moviegoer commented on the film’s opening night in
Ann Arbor, Michigan: “It was a’ight but . . . it wasn’t funny like I thought it’d
be.”38 In the process of mainstreaming Rock’s stand-up humor for a studio film,
the race issues that motored his biting social critique now provide the setup for
a string of running gags.There is little difference in the type of laughter elicited
when Lance celebrates his inability to hail a cab—“I surely am a black man
again”—and the punch Lance/Wellington receives after his impromptu duet
with DMX’s “Ruff Riders” from one of the “homeys.” By streamlining Rock’s
abrasive and edgy performance within a mainstream Hollywood narrative, Down
to Earth delivers humor that could be described as race neutralized rather than
race neutral. Although racial difference is interwoven throughout its narrative,
the film deals with race relations as evasively as the integrationist fairy tale of
Dr. Doolittle. The literal color coding of these films supplies mainstream audiences with comforting but empty signifiers for race in America, wrapped up by
happy endings that celebrate inclusion and acceptance. “Funny is funny,” they
seem to say, “regardless of race, creed, or color.”
As previously discussed, Rock’s political discourse in his HBO oeuvre
exemplified his facility for unflinching and incisive sociopolitical commentary.
Despite the “blanding” that had informed the critique in Down to Earth, as the
story of a black presidential candidate, Head of State (2003) had the potential to
be the film where Rock’s stand-up and screen persona could be joined seamlessly—particularly given the fact that Rock scored a creative triple crown with
the film, acting as star, writer, and director. Instead, in the sociopolitical climate
of the cinematic milieu, as well as the construction of Rock’s presidential candidate, Mays Gilliam, and the other major players including a Condoleezza Rice
clone and Bernie Mac playing . . . well, Bernie Mac, multiple ideologies seem
to be smashing into each other.
Although Head of State’s political critique itself is not new for die-hard
Rock fans, seeing a cinematically realized version of what would happen to a
black man who ran for president (candidate Rock as the virtual center of a bull’s
eye), or the reaction of white “quasi liberals” to the actual possibility of a black
president (swarms of suburbanites pouring out of the Orange County subdivisions to the polls), is not a common sight in a mainstream Hollywood film. As
Manohla Dargis notes, Head of State speaks to a deceptively benign and, thus,
particularly duplicitous social moment: “America loves hip hop culture and
Colin Powell but for Rock what’s more instructive—and grist for his comic
mill—is that divide between white love of Black culture and white fear of a
Black planet.”39 In this light Rock’s film arguably serves a dual purpose. It is a
Hollywood film that addresses the convergences and divergences between
trends in popular culture and forces in public policy in the ways that both race
and class are articulated and contained. More significant, it is an intervention in
American screen comedy that attempts to appropriate a classical Hollywood
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narrative and reframe it within an African American/multicultural context.
After all, the film could just as easily have been called “Mr. Gilliam Goes to
Washington,” with the politics voiced by Rock’s politico everyman informed by
almost Capra-esque populist sentiments: “The politician’s style (and Rock’s
delivery) is ‘Showtime at the Apollo’ brash but the politics could be straight out
of Barbara Ehrenreich’s bestseller ‘Nickel and Dimed.’ If this were the 1930s, and
Mr. Gilliam were, like Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith, mounting a filibuster from
the Senate floor, the rhetoric would sound less radical. In the current climate,
Gilliam’s unfashionable insistence on poverty as a deeply American issue is more
than just startling—it’s downright heretical.”40
Dargis’s assessment of the film’s inherent “radicalism” might easily be contested: the populism-tinged reframing of a postracial “us” in Gilliam’s presidential bid—regardless of the hip-hopification of the campaign—creates a narrative
where cultural and racial specificity is less about ideology and pedagogy than
about preference and style. The Nate Dogg–led version of a Greek chorus
provides commentary on both Gilliam’s rediscovery of self and his trek on the
campaign trail; however, their presence seems more like an additional spice progressively hip-hopified cinematic roux than the genuine tool for self-reflexivity
that it might have been.
On the other hand, it is easy to argue that the PG-13 version of comic
social commentary that emerges in Head of State often recirculates and sanitizes
quotations from the “black president” material from Rock’s act. Furthermore,
Rock and Ali LeRoi, his writing partner, play with stereotypical constructions
of blackness: the ghetto fabulousness of Gilliam’s retooled campaign—complete
with candidate clad in Kangol cap and Sean John sweats—and campaign ads
that look strangely like Snoop videos, the haphazard insertion of Tracy Morgan’s
hilarious, if almost minstrelesque, street hustling “meat man” as well as Robin
Givens playing . . . Robin Givens. Unfortunately, these events are played with
minimal self-reflexivity. Even in the “House Party” fund-raiser sequence, which
was the preferred ad clip for the film, the electric sliding White Gilliam supporters supply one long sight gag punctuated with the literal frenzy over the
old-school chant “the roof . . . the roof . . . the roof is on fire.”This “look at the
silly white folks” moment seems like the cinematic incarnation of a BET Comic
View “white people be like . . .” joke. Less satire than shtick, it underscores the
somewhat puzzling choices made in Head of State.
In the New York Times review of the film, A. O. Scott notes that the “satiric
possibilities” of the film are often squandered: “The result is a political comedy
that refuses to address a single political topic. It is all well and good to poke fun
at the empty, platitudinous dishonesty of political oratory, but the mockery is
blunted when the opposing view is just the same boilerplate in more vivid language. What does Mays stand for? Better schools, better-paying jobs, public
transportation. Just imagine a politician brave enough to stand up and call for
such things.”41 One might argue that, as a new millennial political comedy, Head
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of State—with the populist paradigms seemingly formed outside of concrete
contemporary issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality—may seem fairly pedestrian politically. However, some might also argue that there was some modicum
of sociopolitical critique embedded in the cartoonish construction of the opposition, the incumbent vice president, Brian Lewis, whose spouting off about
family values (and family fame) barely mask megalomania and multiple levels of
entitlement.42
One might theorize that Head of State’s lack of commercial success was
caused by either its dearth of or its inculcation with political content. Regardless, the film has established Rock’s ability to have access and control over all
aspects of his film work. As an A-list black comedic actor, one of a handful of
African Americans who is deemed able to open a film, one might assume that
Rock’s ability to articulate his comic persona within the context of his film
roles would become less problematic—although that clearly has not been the
case. The notion of artistic autonomy is always difficult for the African American actor to attain—and it is no different for the black comic/comedic actor. It
is no accident that the best moment of Head of State finds Rock in the familiar
position behind the mike, his speech and demeanor transformed by his older
brother (Mac):“When are you going to start talking?” In his “That Ain’t Right”
speech the voice of the cultural critic can definitely be heard and Chris Rock
is on the campaign trail—not necessarily Mays Gilliam. For that moment there
is, albeit fleetingly, the sense that this could indeed be social comedy.The indignant tone of Rock’s delivery is undoubtedly the impetus for this particular reading of this anomalous cinematic moment—when the negotiations of race, class,
and comedy play as text rather than subtext in a mainstream movie.
16. The impossible dream: Rock for president in Head of State (2003). Directed by Chris
Rock.
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In his 1997 book, Rock This, the comic made clear his desire to have a
greater presence in American cinema—with a significant caveat: “I’ve been in
movies. I want to make more movies. But I don’t want to be the gimmicky
black guy. I’m holding out for something normal. But nothing scares white
audiences more than black people being normal. Please, let me be a normal guy!
. . . Hollywood keeps looking for another Trading Places. They want something
that plays with black/white differences.”43 When one looks at the range of
Rock’s roles, one must ponder what exactly he means by “normal.” Is Mays
Gilliam, a black new millennial Jefferson Smith, normal? Doesn’t Rock’s role in
Down to Earth (and his stand-up, for that matter) play with black/white differences? Doesn’t his mainstream role as Caretaker in the remake of prison football film The Longest Yard (2005) work within the same rubric as the
Murphy/Ackroyd buddy paradigm found in Trading Places, with Rock in, what
Manohla Dargis refers to as “the humiliating job of playing second banana to a
less gifted comedic talent [the more box office bankable Adam Sandler].”44
I pose these questions not to chide Rock’s role selection but to highlight the
tenuousness of the black comic actor’s position—even after he has made his way
onto the industry’s A-list. It is not surprising that Rock’s earlier jab at the industry’s desire for Trading Places is countered by his later (2005) assessment of the
significance of Murphy’s presence onscreen to him—not necessarily as a black
comic actor but as a black spectator: “[Murphy] was the first Black guy [on the
big screen] that I can remember being cool. I can’t remember going to see a
movie with Black people before him. I barely remember my parents taking us
to see Sounder or Let’s Do It Again.”45
While the two films Rock barely remembers—the former a historical family drama about pre–civil rights black struggle, the latter one of Cosby’s [few]
forays into black film comedy in the seventies—hearken back to earlier forms
of black cultural production in American cinema, Rock seems to call into question the applicability of those cinematic constructions of blackness to the contemporary African American cultural milieu. Furthermore, by juxtaposing the
construction of Murphy’s persona as “Shaft with jokes” and the cinematic iteration of Pryor as depicting someone who “was scared in every movie: Oh, my
what’m I gon’ do?” Rock also speaks to the historical constructions of black
masculinity onscreen (either Shaft or Sambo) and the disparity between the
stand-up comic persona (as you may recall, Pryor is evoked in the roll call of
comic influences in Bring the Pain) and how it is retooled for mainstream cinematic consumption. Undeniably, Murphy acts as the not-so-much-older brother
of Rock (and the Def Jam generation), and his first wave of post-soul black
comedy marks a departure from those who came before by allowing for a
degree of black masculine agency and sexuality to be incorporated in the stage
and screen incarnations of his persona(e). But, it is not a linear progression for
either Murphy or Rock.
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The quest for “normalcy”—for a space to survive and thrive in films with
the black comic actor’s name above the title in a multiplicity of comic roles—
has not been completed in the film careers of either of the first- or second-wave
comics—despite their crossover popularity, their attempts to reframe classical
Hollywood genre in African America contexts, and their integration into mainstream film. Neither Murphy nor Rock is consistently relegated to playing the
“black guy,” the token presence of color on the big or small screen; however,
one sees the dualities of their positions still exist—which comes most sharply
into focus in relationship to the cinematic iterations of their personae.The evolution of their comic personae is always in conversation with the black cultural
past as articulated within and outside of American popular culture and the
mainstream industrial present, which allows space for (minimal) black comedic
stardom, within certain narrow and all-too-familiar constrictions.
Whether Rock can open a film again or Murphy’s career path veers from
the cinematic iteration of the new millennial Cosby (Daddy Day Camp) toward
the multiple character comedies like his original “comeback” film, The Nutty
Professor (or the untitled Brett Ratner project with Rock), or back into an
action-based comedy form (Quentin Tarantino’s remake of Dirty Dozen–like
WWII film Inglorious Bastards), both men’s comic personae continue to inform
notions of what a black comic can be and can do in contemporary American
film. Furthermore, the significance of their comic persona to the mediated cultural production of blackness should not be underestimated. Having said that, it
is necessary to view the persona (and career paths) of either Murphy or Rock
not as emblematic of new millennial black comedy but rather as possible models for those who will follow in terms of the style, content, and ideological
directives of their brands of African American humor. These first- and secondwave post-soul comics are in culturally powerful positions. With increasing
industrial and popular cultural cachet, their voices are endowed with depth and
resonance: they can often be heard more clearly and more widely than the black
politico.
Rock in the Mainstream: The Oscar s
In 2005 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ choice of Chris
Rock to host the 2005 telecast was designed to draw a younger audience—a
self-conscious attempt to hold on to as much of the lucrative eighteen-to-fortynine demographic as possible in a year when televised award fetes were being
tuned-out in droves.46 Far more interesting than either Rock’s actual performance as host was the fact that Rock’s persona became the lead story of a rather
lackluster Oscars’ season.47 Rock, acting both as an agent of the Academy PR
machine and as a protector of his particular comic brand, was everywhere—
from the pages of multiple magazines and newspapers to the talk show/news
magazine circuit. In this instance the industrial market value of the terms,
“edgy,” as it related to a black comic, had risen significantly. As noted by Bruce
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Davis, executive director of the Academy, “edgy is the word that keeps coming
up. I like to hear that people are nervous, because that means you’re likely to
watch.”48 The frequent mobilization of Rock’s cutting-edge comedic brand was
constant—like an extended period of duplicitous foreplay with the audience, or
at least the desired audience.
The “controversial” statements made in the comic’s February interviews
(particularly those published in Entertainment Weekly and the New York Times)
included his assertion that “no straight black man watches the Oscars” and his
admitting that he hasn’t watched the Oscars because “they don’t recognize comedy and you don’t see a lot of black people nominated, so why should I watch
it?” He also hailed comic turned dramatic actor Jamie Foxx (Ray, 2004): “Foxx
is not going to walk out of that place without an Oscar.” While the remarks
seemed part of Rock’s candid and offhanded rap, they also possessed more than
a whiff of calculation.The reaction of longtime Oscar producer Gil Cates to the
controversy—“poor Chris, in the sense that he’s a comedian, he’s supposed to
make people laugh. And he gets bombarded for doing that”—seems to reverberate with the idea that there is no such thing as bad press.49 Furthermore, the
particular type of irreverence (about the “stuffiness” of the ceremony, emotional
reactions to nominations, gender, and sexuality-coded fandom) speaks to a
problematic kind of populism that Rock exhibits in these interviews, which
Nelson George addressed in his comments about the comic’s impending Oscar
gig: “The reasons the Oscars have him there hosting is not to make Warren
Beatty laugh, they have him there to make Joe Six-Pack laugh.”50 George contrasts the Hollywood politico and a color-blind, but decidedly blue-collar,
construction of the everyman in the television audience, thus recognizing both
Rock’s mainstream status in American popular culture and the movable ideological feast encompassed in his humor.
Given the host network, ABC’s renewed commitment to “family friendliness,” Rock’s “edginess” was the award show’s hot commodity—particularly in
the wake of the Jackson-Timberlake “wardrobe malfunction” and the SheridanOwens towel dropping controversy.51 In fact,The “threat” of something “unexpected” happening with Rock at the helm was so appealing that ABC directly
made the connection between these controversial events and the new poster
boy for edginess (Rock) explicit in an Oscar show promo spot. During the Desperate Housewives timeslot Rock was shown “fondling” the “naked” Oscar statuette and declaring, “You won’t believe the halftime show.” As New York Times
columnist Frank Rich noted:“Mr. Rock, as skilled at PR as he is at comedy, ran
around giving cheeky interviews making the ‘outrageous’ charge that the Oscars
might have a gay following. Matt Drudge took the bait and assailed the comedian for indecency. Mr. Rock was soiling the ‘classiest night in Hollywood’ he
said on Fox News, by taking ‘a lewd route . . . to the gutter.’”52 Conservative
blogosphere pundit Matt Drudge’s assault on Rock (and the Academy’s choice
of the comic) proved the assertion that there is no such thing as bad press: it
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solidified Drudge’s position as champion of “traditional values” and Rock’s as
an “edgy” and “dangerous” comic force.53 In the end the media frenzy around
Rock’s hosting duties became an exercise in smart marketing.
Given that the “dangerousness” and “edginess” of the comic’s persona were
the centerpieces of the Academy’s advertising onslaught and the fact that the
show, even with a much-touted seven-second delay, was appearing on primetime network television, Rock was placed in the unenviable position of being
able to meet the expectations of neither his fans nor his detractors.As the comic
promised in his 60 Minutes interview, he did not abandon his comic persona;
Rock did not sing, “there [was] no soft shoe [and] there [was] no tapping”—
the performance he gave, although muted, was still Rock.
Interestingly, it was not his political humor—exemplified by his assertion
that Bush must be a genius to “reapply for his job” and get it the same year that
“there’s a movie in every theater in the country that shows how much you
suck” (Fahrenheit 9/11)—but rather his industry digs—his statement that “there
are only four real stars, and the rest are just popular people.” Despite the fact
that there was self-deprecation built into the jokes series where he stated, “If
you want Tom Cruise and can only get Jude Law—wait” (expanding a bit on
the British actor’s overexposure) before drawing the same conclusion about
himself as an inadequate replacement for Denzel Washington, some actors (most
publicly, Sean Penn) took umbrage to the remark.54 In an evening of comedy
that could be easily characterized as “Rock Lite,” the most memorable moment
was the-man-on-the-street segment filmed at the Magic Johnson Theaters in
Los Angeles, asking black patrons to list their movie of the year. As Paul
Brownfield recounted, “one guy said, ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ [a Vin Diesel
sci-fi/action vehicle]. Several others said White Chicks, which became a running
joke.”55 The coda to the segment was the statement of the only white “patron,”
erudite comic actor and director Albert Brooks, proclaiming that White Chicks
was the best movie and that “Wayans, you were robbed.” The segment spoke,
not simply to differences in taste culture based on race, as well as genre, but also
to the notion that, as Brownfield declared, “Applaud yourself all you want,
Hollywood, but your business is built on the opening take of ‘White Chicks’ at
the mall in the predominantly Black neighborhood. You could feel the selfcongratulatory air back at the Kodak Theater being sucked out of the room,
and, for a brief moment, it felt as though Rock had blown the show open.”56
Such moments of comic subversiveness were few, however, and although Rock
proved to be a more-than-adequate host, he was hardly dangerous and barely
edgy. As Rock would later state on Oprah Winfrey’s post-Oscar special, “It
wasn’t my show, it’s the Oscars. And I was there—I was working for people . . .
when I’m working for me, then I’ll be a little more dangerous.”57
While Rock was not the Oscars’ first black host, the unpredictability and
outspokenness of his African American predecessor,Whoopi Goldberg, was not
seen or marketed as the ceremony’s greatest (ratings) asset. Although “his open-
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17. The
equal-opportunity
offender as host of the Oscars.
Chris Rock in ABC's Oscars
On-Air Promo (2005). Directed
by Jon Favreau. Photo by Danny
Feld, acquired from Photofest,
and reproduced with permission from ABC.
ing monologue and later bit made repeated reference to black performers and
black culture as he sought to add his race-based comedic voice to a telecast that
nonetheless remained cautious and bland,” his centrality at an event that is classically Hollywood makes a statement about the position of his comic persona
in American popular culture.58 At this particular sociocultural moment Rock is
absolutely correct when he states, “I hosted the Oscars, how much more mainstream can you get?”59 However, one must also question whether it signifies
another instance of the commodification of black cultural production—in this
case, of a persona often seen as emblematic of an unbridled, uncompromising
voice in black comedy—or whether the older notions of crossover must be
interrogated in a popular cultural milieu where Chris Rock actually is mainstream.
Pe r sona Pol i ti cs : Murphy and Roc k
in the New Mille nnium
Rooted in an explication of the social conditions of African American life,
black humor carries an inherent critique of cultural and racial inequalities.
Implicitly or explicitly, such humor explores the conflicting (and conflicted)
allegiances of being black and American. The personae of the black comic are
always supervised by the history of race relations in America—from what
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venues he or she can perform in to the assimilationist negotiation of blackness
in mainstream media showcases. As in the civil rights era and earlier, issues of
race continue to inform daily life in black America—in terms of media representation, social mobility, and political agency. How, then, could they not play a
role in its humor?
Indeed, the very qualities that have enabled Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy
to attain a significant cross-racial following is the comic tradition of truth
telling. Whose truth and to what end becomes a significant question. Even
Rock, who whose “transgressive” notion of blackness elicits praise from Michael
Eric Dyson, sometimes shifts uncomfortably under the cultural-critic mantle. In
a New York Times interview the week before the opening of Down to Earth, Rock
commented on what it meant to be a black comedian:“Being a comedian is like
being in a boxing ring but when you add the subject of race, it’s like you get to
use a bat, too. Few guys can’t resist using that bat. But then journalists start
analyzing it and talking to me like I’m Kwesi Mfume [the president of the
NAACP]. I don’t need that gig. All I care about is being funny.”60 Even though
Rock’s comment reveals a desire for a comic tradition that is “outside of history,” it acknowledges the power that black humor offers to the “bat” of social
critique. Four years later, Rock, while adhering to the same premise, seems far
more circumspect about the burden of responsibility borne by the black comic.
In Rock’s 2005 interview on 60 Minutes, broadcast one week before the
Oscar telecast, Ed Bradley read Rock a quotation from a New Republic article
on Rock by Justin Driver, in which he stated that “Rock is attempting to shuck,
jive, grin, shout and bulge his eyes all the way back to the days of minstrelsy. His
act often legitimizes white racists’ views of the world.” Rock appears less taken
aback than tiredly exasperated by Driver’s comment as he responds: “Comedians are verbal clowns. . . . I don’t have the red nose on and floppy shoes . . . but
who am I kidding here? . . . The sad thing is, the black comedian has a weird
responsibility and a weird line that we have to walk that sometimes offends
people like the guy you just quoted.”61
In much the same way that Rock was in a win/win and lose/lose situation
as the host of the Oscars—given that any adjustment of his persona to the venue
would create contention and consternation in supporters and detractors alike—
Murphy and Rock are placed in untenable positions as the comic emissaries for
the post-soul generation. Their personae are always already constituted in relationship to absence—as the fortunate few who are given the ability and responsibility to convey black culture and experience through comic discourse.
Whether Rock’s Everybody Hates Chris becomes the new sitcom gold standard
and Peabody-winning darling or Murphy decides to return to the stand-up
stage after an almost two-decades absence or to retool his comic persona in the
image of another civil rights era comic (Gregory instead of Cosby or Pryor),
some will undoubtedly be disappointed in the choices made by these first- and
second-wave comics. Whether in terms of stasis or changeability of style,
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ideologies, or politics; of courting and/or achieving crossover, embracing or
rejecting genre, narrowcasting or typecasting, their actions are scrutinized
industrially and culturally.With their success (and the burden of representation)
comes an additional responsibility—to actually speak to the African American
condition in all its myriad forms while contending with the mutability of the
aesthetic, cultural, industrial, and historical moment.
One must ask whether it is unfair to expect black comedians to operate
within a pedagogy informed as much by cultural criticism as by the need just
to “be funny”? Yes, but I would maintain that it is necessary nonetheless. This
necessity is illustrated by the color adjustments that take place in the mainstreaming of the black comic persona for Hollywood comedy—and in the
miniscule number of black actors or black-themed films that are actually
deemed able to “go wide” or television programs deemed to have an appeal
beyond the “urban niche.”The ability to “go wide” or to “open” a film is, however, a guarantee of neither a consistent box office success nor wholesale acceptance from all segments of the moviegoing populace—black and white—as
exemplified in the audience’s ever-shifting love affair with the personae of
crossover diva Whoopi Goldberg.
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Chap te r 4
Crossover Diva
Wh oop i G ol db e rg and Pe r sona Pol it ics
Since her landmark one-woman show in 1985 Whoopi
Goldberg has been somewhat of an entertainment anomaly: a black comic diva.
On stage and screen Goldberg has gained a degree of critical and financial success attained by few African American comics—and industrial clout accorded to
even fewer women. With the notable exception of Jackie “Moms” Mabley and
Pearl Bailey, whose careers, like Goldberg’s, straddle stage and screen, Whoopi
has acquired what few black female comic entertainers of either the pre–or
post–civil rights era have been able to gain: access to white main stages and the
entertainment mainstream.All of these women, with varying degrees of success,
knew how to play to their audiences.The differences between the Moms of the
Chitlin’ Circuit in the forties and fifties (and mainstream clubs of the sixties) and
the Moms on The Ed Sullivan Show in the late sixties and seventies can be found
in nuances of language and delivery rather than substantive content, while
Bailey’s Pearlie Mae persona, which was center stage in most of her stage work
in nightclubs and on Broadway, made only cameo appearances in a majority of
her screen roles. Like those of her predecessors, Goldberg’s career navigates
crossover waters by mobilizing multiple personae—dependent on both
intended audience and the limitations of the given medium. However, unlike
Mabley and Bailey, the many facets of Whoopi often seem at war with each
other—particularly in relationship to her comedic work.
Goldberg, who first came to prominence for her inventive and transgressive
comic characters onstage, often seems to flounder in tired genre pieces such as
Eddie (1996) and Bogus (1996) or to be woefully underutilized as the virtual
Rhoda of melodramedies—Moonlight and Valentino (1995), Boys on the Side
(1995), and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998). Furthermore, the roles of
the put-upon, disempowered mothers of the African American family dramedies Kingdom Come (2001) or Good Fences (2003) seem to have a greater kinship to Celie in The Color Purple (1985) than to her Oscar-winning role as Oda
Mae Brown in Ghost (1990), Sister Mary Clarence in the Sister Act franchise of
the early nineties, or Sarah Matthews in Made in America (1993). Goldberg’s
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extratextual presence also frames the popular understanding of her comic persona: the outspoken cultural critic’s impromptu remarks have cast her alternately
as advocate (her work with and performances on Comic Relief) or saboteur
(most recently, her anti-Bush remarks endeared her neither to the hipster Kerry
faithful nor to Slim-Fast, for whom she had acted as spokesperson, and, possibly,
voters in swing states). Goldberg’s stature in the industry remains problematic,
tenuous, and high: the significance of the fact that the Whoops is the only
female to host the Academy Awards–and has done so multiple times—should be
neither under- nor overestimated.
In exploring Goldberg’s comic personae in relationship to those who came
before and those who followed her, one begins to discern how race, sexuality,
and gender are played with and against by female black comic actors and how
the construction of their personae are inextricably tied to tropes of black femininity—for better and for worse. In her introduction to Not Just Race, Not Just
Gender,Valerie Smith mobilizes Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality
“as a mode of cultural or textual analysis, what it means to read at the intersections of constructions of race, gender, class and sexuality.”1 This concept seems
particularly apt for the discussion of the multiple ideological and sociocultural
impulses that inform the personae that are Whoopi Goldberg. It is in this intersection that we all exist—our identities and our articulation of them, fluid and
never fixed, always already being impacted by our past and present as well as by
histories of race, class, gender, and nation. Undoubtedly, the complex process of
identity formation for black women in the United States is in conversation with
Goldberg’s evolving comic personae. As one might expect when dealing with an
individual who consistently endeavors to defy both convention and expectation,
it is not always a friendly conversation. On one hand, the evolution of her persona and her sometimes contentious relationship with her audiences (black and
white) calls to mind Dick Gregory’s reflections on the “friendly relation”
involved in being a black comic.2 This “relation” is further problematized for
Whoopi by gendered notions of “how to be funny” and those tied to the function of racial and cultural specificity in stand-up comedy, in the theater, and on
the big and small screens in the post–civil rights era. Furthermore, as with
Gregory’s act, the high level of sociopolitical critique that has informed much of
Goldberg’s stage work has, in the past, complicated the friendly relation—and it
continues to do so.While Gregory’s political activism would eventually pull him
out of the entertainment mainstream, Goldberg, holding fast to her industrial
position, continues to speak her mind—in multiple venues and with varying
results. On the other hand, as I suggested in my introduction, one could argue
that Goldberg began crossed-over. Thus, her outspokenness, her unabashed disdain for being “niched,” and her idiosyncratic sense of humor and appropriateness have sometimes had the effect of setting her apart from the black
community—for which, like it or not, she will always be seen as a representative.
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Furthermore, when viewing Goldberg in relationship to other post-soul
(and even civil rights era) comics, issues of gender, comic tradition, and trajectory, as well as what one might call her “era,” come into play. Goldberg is a contemporary of Eddie Murphy; both came into comic prominence in the 1980s.
However, as the elder statesperson of the post–civil rights era comics examined
in this volume, Goldberg occupies a position that straddles the civil rights and
post-soul era in her life and her comedy.While Whoopi enjoys high visibility in
film, theater, and television, to a degree that could be seen as comparable to Flip
Wilson in his heyday or even Bill Cosby (pre– and post–The Cosby Show), her
acceptance by both mainstream and black audiences has always been mitigated
by the textual and extratextual construction of both her personal politics and
her comic persona. Like Gregory, Pryor, and Chris Rock, onstage her comic
discourse is imbricated with sociopolitical discourse. Yet Goldberg is granted
“equal-opportunity offender” status begrudgingly—particularly in the black
community. After following the trajectory of her career, one might even argue
that both her ideological bent and her comic content are informed more by the
San Francisco counterculture, vestiges of Oakland radicalism (like Richard
Pryor) and theater (in California and on and off-Broadway) than the comic
legacy of the Chitlin’ Circuit, the treks through comedy clubs, or the Reagan
era black urban experience.
I use the phrase “crossover diva” to try to capture the conflicted and conflictual position that Goldberg occupies in American comedy. A slew of adjectives come to mind when one thinks of a diva: gifted, unique, uncompromising, and,
of course, prima donna.The term diva is thrown around a lot these days—usually
in association with events starring a few pop stars du jour and a couple of oneof-a-kind performers whose body of work has given them venerated status or
when referring to someone’s unreasonable self-importance or selfish demands.
I choose to mobilize the word as a signifier for a unique black female comic
presence who occupies a space in the entertainment world that, as much as possible, she defines (or tries to define). Thus, the choice to focus upon persona
rather than star, which necessarily forces one to foreground the comic actor’s
body of work rather than his or her personal life, is further complicated because
the diva, one might argue, is always “on.” Again, the notion of intersectionality
comes into play, not only in the construction of the persona in relationship to
race, class, and gender but also in the ways she is perceived at this same intersection.To understand the significance of Goldberg’s various personae, one must
see how their trajectory was directed by and, in turn, directs other black
women’s comic personae.While the apolitical “sassiness” of Bailey may have less
of a kinship to Goldberg than the raucous sexual candor of Moms or the irreverent brand of lived black feminism expounded by diva-in-training Wanda
Sykes, the complexities of Goldberg’s choices of comic personae, as annunciated
in her stand-up/stage performance and in film comedies, reflect and refract
their articulations of African American womanhood in myriad forms: the
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hypersexualized and desexualized, the stereotypical and the anomalous, within
“integrated” milieus and homogeneous media texts. One might assume that the
multiplicity of variations on the theme of black women’s humor would marginalize Goldberg’s comic voice.
Surprisingly, in reality Whoopi Goldberg has been afforded a dually—albeit
mitigated—privileged space from which to speak for—if not always to—the
African American community. Sadly, for audiences whose knowledge of Goldberg is limited to questionable comedic fare like Bogus and Eddie, the onstage
prowess of the actor seems more like an antiquated legend than a popular cultural reality. Just as one might question Pryor’s iconic status in American comedy if one had only viewed his Gene Wilder buddy films and not the pinnacle
of the comedy performance film, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, those who came
to know Whoopi in the late nineties and the first decade of the new millennium have a woefully limited picture of her comedic discourse.While this study
focuses on the cinematic constructions of Whoopi, one must recognize the
(minimally) bifurcated nature of her comic persona—existing as if the split
between the onscreen and onstage personae, between the audacious sociocultural critic and the amiable trickster, is the function of sort of a willed
schizophrenia. Like Richard Pryor, the cinematic construction of her comic
personae often provides only the vestiges of the scathing sociopolitical critique
and expansive notions of the American condition.Yet in order to understand the
multiple functions of Goldberg’s comic personae, it is necessary to trace its
evolution from the beginning—from the moment of Whoopi—and The Spook
Show.
Constructing the Comic Whoopi:
The Spook Show and Beyond
From the choice of her stage name—“Whoopi,” of cushion fame, and
“Goldberg,” either a homage to Borscht Belt comics or the name suggested by
her mother (depending on which bio one consults—and there are many differing accounts), the former Caryn Johnson was compelled to challenge and defy
predetermined conceptions of who she was and what she would be like.3 After
Johnson became Goldberg, her comic personae began to take shape—honing
her acting skills at San Diego’s Repertory Theatre, then in its infancy, and her
comic instincts in the improvisation troupe Spontaneous Combustion. The
moment of Whoopi, however, coincides with the creation of The Spook Show,
written by Goldberg with additional material by David Schien, with whom she
also codirected the production. This first iteration of what would later be her
Broadway debut was first presented at Berkeley’s Hawkeye Studio in 1982,
before touring Europe and landing at New York’s Dance Theatre Workshop in
1983. The series of monologues in the show attested not only to Goldberg’s
range as an actor—playing diverse characters from a black male junkie to a
teenaged white surfer chick—it revealed her affinity for those on the margins
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of society. Like her chosen name, the title of the show was designed to play with
audience expectations. As Mischa Berson states in “Whoopi in Wonderland,”
expounding on the creator’s intentionality in relationship to the show’s title, the
word spook is a derogatory term used for blacks, (usually within the African
American community); “the word is also a synonym for ghost—an invisible
presence, just as many of the underclass characters Goldberg portrays remain
invisible with mass culture.”4 The off-Broadway performance of The Spook
Show, which had already provided Goldberg with a cult following on the West
Coast, came to the attention of renowned director Mike Nichols. “I’ve never
seen anyone like her,” declared the award-winning director of stage and screen,
“one part Elaine May, one part Groucho, one part Ruth Draper, one part
Richard Pryor and five parts never before seen.”5 By 1984, the self-titled show,
Whoopi Goldberg, was in production at the Lyceum, and the actor was rapidly
becoming a darling of Broadway.
With the unabashed success of Whoopi Goldberg the comic actor, who had
been doing theater since the mid-seventies, became an overnight phenomenon
and went from stalwart actor in the provinces to diva. In Enid Nemy’s piece for
the New York Times, “Whoopi’s Ready, but Is Broadway?” Goldberg voiced her
insistence on not being bound by so-called “traditional” casting. “I’m going to
change all that because I’m good. I can be a dog, a chair, anything, and people
are shocked and surprised because they don’t see too many actors these days,
only personalities.”6 The audaciousness of Goldberg’s claims could only be
made because of the virtuosity of her performance. Onstage she moved fluidly
from satire to pathos, from stand-up comedy to the brink of tragedy. In retrospect, one can see pieces of later iterations of Whoopi’s stand-up and cinematic
personae in each character’s monologue, as well as the sociocultural themes that
informed her work for the next two decades.
With characters that continued to resonate with audiences long after they
left the theater, the show, which ran from 90 to 120 minutes any given night,
allowed Goldberg to truly occupy different personae: “the Surfer Girl,” whose
singsong, Valley Girl–informed whine intones, in denial-filled casualness, her
botched self-abortion; “the Crippled Girl,” who, embodied with physical and
vocal dexterity by Goldberg, waxes poetic on what living with difference actually means; and the Jamaican nurse, who talks candidly about caring for and,
later, loving the old man she refers to as “The Raisin.”Two characters that speak
most directly to the personae that Goldberg would continue to inhabit were
“the Little Girl with Blond Hair” and “the Junkie.”
In the “Little Girl with Blond Hair” monologue Goldberg engages the
struggle with budding media-induced racial self-hatred as depicted in a little
black girl, who wears a white shirt on her head to simulate her “long, luxurious blond hair.” With a soft, childlike, semi-shy lilt in her voice, swinging her
body back and forth in the gentle rhythm natural to a child speaking to an
adult, she confesses her desire to attain a “Breck Girl” existence, in language that
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is both funny and poignant: “I told my mother I didn’t want to be black no
more. . . . Man, she say even if you sitting in a vat of Clorox till hell freezes over,
you ain’t gonna be nothing but black.And she was right too, because I sat in the
Clorox and I got burned. And she say I just got to be happy with what I got,
but look. See? It don’t do nothing. It don’t blow in the wind. And it don’t
casca—cascadadade down my back. It don’t.” While very directly addressing
racialized notions of beauty, Goldberg doesn’t offer a simple solution; rather she
makes visible experiences that the audience might never otherwise see.
Furthermore, with Goldberg as the little girl—dark-skinned, dreadlocks, with
features not considered beautiful by Eurocentric standards—this monologue
challenges narrow definitions of beauty and testifies to the damage done by
them.
Despite the power and the prowess shown in the other monologues of the
show, the segment that comes closest to the voice of Whoopi—irreverent, outrageous, and, arguably, outraged—is Fontaine, the junkie, who opens the show.
Fontaine’s entrance immediately lets the audience know that this is not going
to be a night of traditional theater. He is heard—singing—before he is seen:
Around the world, in 80 Motherfucking Days . . .
Da dooby doo,
Da dooby do,
Da dooby do be do be do-waaah.
18. Whoopi Goldberg channels Fontaine in her one-woman show, Whoopi Goldberg:
Direct from Broadway (1985). Directed by Thomas Schlamme.
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On the second time through the chorus, the audience sees Goldberg as
Fontaine, scarf tied around her head, dark glasses and a slow, hipster strut.
Fontaine continues to sing as he moves toward the center of the stage. Like all
the characters, Fontaine speaks directly to the audience; unlike the others, he
expects them to answer back:
What’s happenin’? [Exasperated] What’s happenin’?
Look, I say what’s happenin,’ you say everything is everything, whatever
the fuck you all say. So we’re gonna try this shit again.
[Fontaine leaves the stage and begins the show again.]
Around the world, in 80 Motherfucking Days . . .
Da dooby doo,
Da dooby do,
Da dooby do be do be do-waaah.
What’s happenin’?
[Audience speaks out with multiple muddled responses]
That wasn’t shit.
Although breaking the fourth wall is clearly significant here, as is the choice of
song, which connects thematically to the monologue that will follow and
begins the disruption of the audience’s notions about the breadth of Fontaine’s
cultural fluency, perhaps more important is the relationship that Fontaine
immediately establishes with the audience: he is in a position of authority.
Goldberg, speaking in a low growl reminiscent of a blaxploitation movie hustler, endows Fontaine with toughness and just a touch of menace—the kind that
might induce the clutching of pocketbooks if the upscale Broadway patrons
were to pass him on the street. Fontaine, aware of this possible perception, toys
further with the audience: “Lot of people real uptight around me—I don’t
understand it. I think I’m real friendly. [Pauses, staring over his dark glasses out
at the audience] Don’t you?”
Fontaine’s monologue, which is the longest in the show, takes him from JFK
airport to Amsterdam. His description of a visit to the Anne Frank House provides the opportunity for universalizing experiences of hope, loss, and oppression. It also gave Goldberg the opportunity to challenge, yet again, audience
expectations—to complicate their conception of the junkie by constructing for
him a life that responds to real-world possibilities. His discovering of the room
where Anne and her family hid is preceded by a passage that, within the context of the story, makes a statement that calls into question the civil rights era
ethos that higher education is the ticket to “a better life”: “And, as I was perusing the area, I noticed a small staircase leading up to a big bookcase, and I’m
into books, you know, I got a Ph.D. in literature from Columbia. [The audi-
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ence’s uproarious laughter is met by a cold, incredulous stare] . . . I know you
don’t think I was born a junkie. I have an education. I got a Ph.D. I can’t do shit
with so I stay high so I don’t get mad.”
After that moment of sociopolitical critique, made in passing, Fontaine confesses breaking down in the hidden room, “and I’m not a crier, I’d just as soon
cut your throat as look at you.” To let the audience share the reality of twenty
hours a day in silence required during the Franks’ time in hiding, Fontaine stands
silent for a minute, before stating, “Twenty hours of no movement? I could’ve
done it.” Overwhelmed with emotion, he describes trying to leave “because my
manhood was on the line” when he was filled with righteous indignation at a
quotation posted on the wall: “In spite of everything, I still believe people are
good at heart.” Realizing that the words were Anne Frank’s, his indignation is
replaced by wonder at a child’s ability to “to see the good in the worst situations.”The semipoetic rumination on the horror of that historical moment, what
it meant for people who “didn’t see it coming,” and the contrast between the
violence of the civil rights movement and the experience of the Holocaust create an interesting frame for Fontaine’s journey into the hinterland, where “the
only thing black was the forest and me” and where, despite his expectations of
the contrary, he finds the people to be kind. In the end, after a return flight filled
with mechanical difficulties lands him in Bellevue, Fontaine’s unconventional
“American Abroad” story becomes a work of philosophical introspection in
regard to how we treat one another and our own forms of intolerance: “I had a
lot of time to think you know, in between freak bouts. ’Cause it turns out, you
know, I’m one of those people,‘if you don’t speak English don’t come up to me
in the street and ask me where shit is.’Yeah, you’re the same way, right? . . . It is
real hard to be that cold once you’ve been the alien. . . . It don’t take nothin’ but
a little bit o graciousness, Mon.”Yet the possible sentimentality of life’s truisms
proffered by a junkie philosopher is cut by Fontaine’s awareness of the “real
world” and his place in it: even as he gives the directive to appreciate “that life
is a constant thing, it’s constant live and learn,” he repositions himself in the
social order, as if to underscore his doubt that they will actually listen to him:
“Never get over that shit, not even a junkie. Not even a junkie.”
In Fontaine, Whoopi Goldberg found a comic alter ego that, if not autobiographically informed, was certainly inflected by her lived experience. As a
former heroin addict, Goldberg understands that the addict is more than the
addiction, and certainly this understanding is part of what allows Fontaine to
be the most fully realized character in the show. Moreover, Fontaine’s irreverently incisive critique and his candid self-assessment provided the truest indication of Goldberg’s actual comic voice up to that time. Interestingly, endowing
Fontaine’s monologue with the greatest degree of discursive power provided a
masculine voice for Goldberg’s persona. Thus, in this instance gender is displaced by race, which informs not only Fontaine’s worldview but also the
authority with which he speaks—even if he is speaking from the margins.
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In the intervening years between her Broadway debut in 1984 and her second HBO special in 1988, Goldberg continued to gain both acclaim and industrial cachet.7 Goldberg returned briefly to the Bay Area stage, where she starred
in Moms, a play she cowrote based on the works of Jackie “Moms” Mabley,
whom she states was one of her comic idols. Between 1985 and 1988 Goldberg
made an auspicious film debut as Celie in The Color Purple—which yielded her
first Academy Award nomination and her first taste of controversy within the
industry and within the black community.8 A string of less-than-memorable
comedies followed, including 1986’s Jumping Jack Flash, which was Penny
Marshall’s directorial debut, and Clara’s Heart (1988), her first melodramedy, in
which she plays the Jamaican caretaker to a pre–Doogie Howser, Neil Patrick
Harris. Despite inauspicious roles in film comedies not written with Goldberg
in mind (Jumping Jack Flash was intended for Shelly Long and Burglar for Bruce
Willis), her comic cachet continued to grow—due at least in part to her work
as an activist as well as a comic during the Reagan era.
By the time Fontaine: Why Am I Straight? (HBO) aired in August of 1988,
Goldberg’s reputation for being outspoken in terms of her political beliefs was
well established. Whereas the construction of the junkie philosopher in its
earlier iteration had been informed less by a political agenda than a commonsense form of humanism, the clean and sober Fontaine of 1988 ripped into the
status quo with a vengeance.Whereas Goldberg had previously used Fontaine’s
reflections on his European experiences as idiosyncratic yet universalizing
object lessons—from the emotional catharsis at the Anne Frank House, resulting in the desire to do “better,” to the transformative power of his own “alien”
experience as a means to encourage tolerance, the new Fontaine was not showing; he was telling. The hour-long special was less a monologue than it was
Whoopi doing stand-up through Fontaine. Furthermore, there are moments
when the line between Goldberg and Fontaine blurs. In one joke series
Fontaine castigates Nancy Reagan, whom he dislikes “because she doesn’t live
in the real world. . . .You cannot live in the real world and tell teenagers, ‘Just
Say No.’” He then extols the virtues of Lady Bird Johnson, who was “the only
First Lady”: “Nobody remembers Lady Bird but me. I remember because she
employed me—she put up theaters. She built the arts.” It seems that Goldberg’s
biography—not the character’s—is being referenced.
As Goldberg’s political agenda comes, unfiltered, through Fontaine, so, too,
does a more direct form of sociopolitical discourse, less concerned with seeking the audience’s empathy than with unequivocally stating a point, regardless
of how the audience might react to it.This pedagogical shift is demonstrated in
Fontaine’s unanticipated de facto defense of Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder’s statement about blacks’ athletic superiority and their deficiencies in terms of being
part of team management, by citing that, in the old days, they “bred us” to be
athletically superior. The mitigated defense also includes chastising those who
jumped on the castigation bandwagon as harboring a double standard. Fontaine
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states that the “flip side” of Jimmy the Greek, and signal of the fluctuation in
the nature of the public’s outrage, was the liberals’ embrace of Jesse Jackson’s
1988 presidential campaign:
Jessie when he ran the first time talked about a beautiful idea—the rainbow
coalition . . . a great utopian vision where everybody was equal except the
people in Hymietown. . . . People say to me, why are you fucking with the
brother, mon. Because I ain’t gonna vote for him ’cause he’s black ’cause it
didn’t work for the white folks. See you can’t vote based on this. . . . [Pointing emphatically to his skin] Yes, it good to be the first and the forefront—
but you damn well better be the best.9
Fontaine’s reiteration of the disparaging remark from the 1984 campaign and his
condemnation of those who support Jackson based primarily on racial affinity
forms a sort of two-tiered attack—on what Goldberg sees as hypocrisy in
liberals, who condemn Jimmy the Greek and forgive Jackson, and on African
Americans (the target audience for the last comment), whom she constructs as
politically naive if they believe that the same race means the same political
agenda.
Over the course of the sixty-minute set, the targets of Goldberg/Fontaine’s
ire are varied and many—and sometimes couched in celebratory language that
turns quickly to wry criticism. Such was the case in the discussion of the
national frenzy over the welfare of Baby Jessica, who in 1987, at age eighteen
months, fell into a well in Midland,Texas, and became the lead story worldwide
as rescuers worked feverishly for three days before safely retrieving her. Fontaine
applauds the national “concern”:
America, when we get behind stuff, is incredible. We are like a symphony
in motion.The American people together is what makes the country great.
Baby goddam Jessica . . . Baby Jessica fell in the hole . . . and America went
catatonic. . . . Had nothing but CNN everywhere you looked . . . the Baby
Jessica report, the Baby Jessica minute, the Baby Jessica second. . . . When
they brought her up, it was like the end of a Busby Berkeley musical. . . .
That’s what’s great about the country because everybody was glad. She got
dolls, she got candy, bitch got a Toyota truck.
As the emphasis builds in this passage, it is Goldberg’s voice, not Fontaine’s, that
achieves auditory dominance; as the low, slow growl becomes deep and clear,
the emphasis on the “patriotic” component of the national concern is undeniable: “She got a telegram from the President of the United States saying that ‘as
spokesman from the American people, we’re glad you’re safe.’ She couldn’t read
it but she’ll have it to show her children. This is what makes America great.”
As with the passage exposing the Jimmy the Greek/Jesse Jackson duality,
Goldberg/Fontaine reveals another national double standard. By employing the
same sort of comic misdirection, the monologue’s celebration of the wealth of
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concern for “our children” as an American virtue turns into condemnation for
the dearth of compassion as a national sin: “The flip side of [the concern for
Baby Jessica] is the Ray brothers.The three little boys, who were hemophiliacs,
who got AIDS from a transfusion, who got bombed out [of] their own house
in [the] neighborhood they grew up in. There was no fervor. There was no
‘Oooh, the Ray brothers.’ Nothing.” Although the intensity builds in this
speech, the voice remains Fontaine’s, wry, incredulous, and progressively more
angry: “There certainly was no telegram from the President saying, ‘Look guys,
this is un-American behavior, and as your president, I’m going to let the
country know that I stand behind you, and I’m going to let the country know
because this is not how we handle things here.’ Nothing. See, I don’t understand
that. I don’t understand where we were.”
Goldberg/Fontaine calls into question the unspoken prejudices, the
“acceptable” forms of passive discrimination, implicit in silence and lack of
demonstrative concern for the Ray brothers. Fontaine’s rhetorical question
drips with venom as he acknowledges both the absence of care and of outrage.10 Goldberg/Fontaine’s outrage over there being no “kiss” for these children, or for those adult victims of the AIDS epidemic, from either the general
public or the administration, is recontextualized within the character’s new
sense of clarity and accountability: “See I’m straight now and maybe that’s why
it’s so angering.”
As Mel Watkins notes, “In that special, Goldberg proved that she could be
as blasphemous as [Eddie] Murphy but her humor spotlighted social and political satire as well as straightout parody.”11 Watkins’s comparison of Goldberg to
Murphy, while apt on some levels, draws attention to the gendered dimensions
of stand-up comedy, in which, the audaciousness of the male’s content is viewed
differently from that of a female’s—with greater license being granted to the
former in terms of being as “nasty as you want to be.” One might even argue
that Goldberg’s initial decision to disseminate her scathing critique through the
masculine filter of Fontaine speaks to these gendered assumptions. Furthermore,
while the audaciousness of Murphy’s humor, particularly in Raw (1987), was
rooted in masculinist discourse on sexual politics, popular culture, and celebrity,
Goldberg, who was always overtly political at this point in her career, did not
use extended discussions of sexuality as a comic staple.
Goldberg’s rise to national prominence in the mid-eighties coincided with
an increasingly difficult period for black America.This was an era when the gift
of Reaganomics was the ever-expanding gap between rich and poor, and poverty
among blacks was at an all-time high.The crack epidemic (another eighties phenomenon) was accompanied by the expansion of violence (gang- and drugrelated) and wreaked havoc in urban black America. In the same era when
Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was established as a national holiday and Jesse
Jackson’s run for the presidency seemed to act as testaments to how far we had
come in the struggle for civil rights, the incarceration of black men rose to
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record numbers. The eighties marked a period in which African American
women writers (from Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to Terry MacMillan),
whose work gave voice to a multiplicity of black women’s experiences, emerged.
At the same time, media images spun new tales of black female archetypes to join
the mammy and the jezebel, namely, those of the welfare queen and the black
female “buppie” (black urban professional) or the “black lady.”Taken in tandem,
these emergent tropes of black femininity, like their predecessors, served as yet
another means by which black women could be blamed for their own oppression and could be used to offer justification for the cutting of social welfare
spending or the limitations sought in relationship to affirmative action. As
Wahneema Lubiano notes, “Whether not achieving and passing on bad culture
as welfare mothers, or by virtue of having achieved middle-class success . . . black
women are responsible for the disadvantaged status of African Americans.”12
By the mid-eighties the administration’s domestic policy had a devastating
impact on the underclass—namely, the homeless and the working poor—
especially in urban America: from the lost revenue sharing to cities and reduced
funding for public service jobs and job training to the elimination of the
antipoverty Community Development Block Grant program and the reduction
of funds for public transit. One of Goldberg’s first public political acts responded
to this glaring need in the “greed is good” days in the land of plenty. Goldberg,
along with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, became the public face of Comic
Relief, a nonprofit organization created by writer-producer Bob Zmuda in
1986, which used the increased popularity of stand-up to raise funds and awareness to fight homelessness. For Goldberg the telethon stand-up show provided
a venue to espouse her strongly held political beliefs with like-minded comic
actors. Goldberg became associated with this crusade against homelessness, a
cause that cut across boundaries of race, gender, and region and, in so doing,
became a high-profile equal opportunity activist.13 By the early nineties,
emboldened by the significant industrial currency from her Academy
Award–winning role in Ghost, Goldberg became even more insistent on bringing her particular political agenda to the public’s attention—regardless of the
venue. No longer using characters as vehicles for her discourse, Goldberg’s
voice, unfiltered, expounded on glaring social and political ills.
Whether pitching a movie on the talk show circuit or hosting an awards
show, Goldberg utilized these personal engagements and her high entertainment profile to provide commentary on the current political climate. As the
host of a showcase of alternative comedy on HBO, Chez Whoopi (1991), held at
The Comedy Act, a premiere club for young black talent in South Central Los
Angeles, Goldberg’s opening monologue focused on the popular conceptions of
“the hood” in post–King beating (pre–LA uprising) America:
Thanks to HBO for being brave, brave white people, thank you. I know
how uncomfortable it must be for folks because now that Daryl Gates is
gone, I feel a lot better on the streets. [Laughter] No, it’s true. And they put
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out the Christopher Report and people been saying this shit for two years,
have been trying to get the motherfucker out but they said “Mmm, Mmm,
[no,] we have to do it the right way.” Now, eight motherfuckers [are] saying to get his ass out. Now, if they had read the Goldberg report, they would
have known. It had one page said “Fuck him.” Bye, bye, Darrel [Gates] . . .
good riddance—you can kiss all of our black asses.14
Although Goldberg’s presence is actually relatively minimal in this special,
her monologues acting as the bookends for the show, it clearly illustrates how,
by utilizing racially informed politicized observational humor with a clearly
articulated agenda, Goldberg used stand-up as a bully pulpit for both her causes
and her grievances. While humor was never secondary to her sociopolitical
agenda, she was not simply doing a set. Goldberg was giving a lecture, as illustrated in her appearance in Comic Relief V, held in Los Angeles in May of 1992,
less than a month after the upheaval that, arguably, brought race relations back
into the center of American political discourse.This fifth installment, a hip-hop
flavored edition, began with Goldberg, Crystal, and Williams’s rapping on social
ills including homelessness. In so doing, the trio’s opening number acted as a
concrete recognition of the ways that the understanding of black culture and
experience were/are central to dealing with what ails American society—as did
their close-up of the Angeleno sociopolitical, economic, and cultural milieu,
constructing it as a microcosm of American society rather than as an urban
anomaly. Unlike cohost Billy Crystal’s monologue, which was delivered as the
sexagenarian proprietor of a black-owned business, who had spent his lifetime
in the ’hood, which provided an elliptically historicized vision of the postverdict aftermath in the black community and ended with a vow to rebuild and
heal the wounds of the city, Goldberg did not take a reconciliationist tact.
“Makes you wonder, ’cause it is hard to justify to young people these days, why
the law is there. . . . Now if you break the law, you’re supposed to go to jail,
right? Right? Oliver North broke the law and now he’s out. Bush and Reagan
broke the law and they’re free. So you’re pissed at me for looting?”
By reframing the discussion of the LA uprising in relationship to a different absence of “law and order,” Goldberg offers an additional spin on the notion
of “equal justice,” which was one of the core issues sparking the rebellion.
Moreover, by not calling for everyone to pull together and, as mayor of Los
Angeles Tom Bradley suggested, stay home and watch The Cosby Show, Goldberg stood at the beginning of what would be a long line of comics and commentators who contested how the events in April had been televisually
constructed and sociopolitically rationalized:
There were a lot of white folks down there. Didn’t see them on television.
I saw more black folks on TV in the past couple of weeks than I have seen
in my entire life. My entire life I have never seen so many black people on
TV. I was like, “Hey look, we got households, we got homes and families.”
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Suddenly, it became interesting for people to know how many folks were
out there . . . all because of this. I said to people I don’t understand why
everyone’s surprised, because they knew it was coming. The nation had a
nervous breakdown, not just in LA, all over the country.
Goldberg’s monologue on Comic Relief, like her act on Chez Whoopi, gave
explicit articulations of the intersections between her blackness and the state of
African American community. Given that Goldberg’s mediated position within
the African American community has been marked by sporadic expressions of
ambivalence and antagonism (as will be discussed in greater detail in relation to
her film roles), the content of her commentary, its astuteness and insight, is
sometimes lost in the impulse to ignore the messenger. Whoopi Goldberg—as
activist, comic actor, and diva—will not be ignored.
When Goldberg acted as the first African American host of the Academy
Awards in 1994, she brought her highly politicized brand of humor to the usually fundamentally apolitical proceedings: speaking directly to supporters and
detractors alike, she made her personal political agenda explicit:
I seem to cross so many ethnic and political lines. I’m an equal opportunity
offender and to make sure that you don’t feel shortchanged on the political soap box department, I’m gonna get it all out of my system right now:
save the whales and the spotted owl, gay rights, men’s rights, human rights,
feed the homeless, more gun control, free the Chinese dissidents, peace in
Bosnia, health care reform, choose choice, act up, more AIDS research, less
Frank Sinatra finish, Lorena Bobbit please meet Bob Dole, and somebody
stop these damn earthquakes. I think I took care of everything . . . including my career.
As self-professed equal-opportunity offender, Goldberg offers a broad swath of
critique and establishes her affinity with multiple communities; she also makes
clear her unwillingness to being limited by the political agenda of any one of
them. While one might argue that Goldberg’s construction of her comic personae, onstage (literally and figuratively) was tailor-made for her very personalized politics, the intentionality of the comic in the creation of his or her persona
is only half the story; the way in which the personae are seen to mobilize, represent, and speak to varied ideological and cultural impulses in American popular culture is the other half. Clearly, Goldberg’s forthright comedic persona
posits her in unique and problematic space within the entertainment industry: a
sort of A-list star with an asterisk next to her name. The power of that asterisk
both signifies her highly politicized public persona and suggests a negative spin
on Mike Nichols’s early praise—“I have never seen anyone like her.” In the film
industry, which never seems to know exactly what to do with her, her uniqueness is not necessarily a good thing. This fact becomes progressively and more
painfully apparent when examining the body of her comic film work.
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In a 2001 interview Goldberg, with characteristic acumen, observed, “I’ve
never been offered a lot of scripts because nobody is sure what to do with
me.”15 As a black woman in American film, Goldberg is indeed an anomaly:
neither a Hattie McDaniel, known for playing quintessential “mammies,” nor a
Dorothy Dandridge, whose talent and beauty (in Eurocentric terms) afforded
her a wider (although still narrow) field of roles, nor is she a Pam Grier, the
blaxploitation queen, who established new parameters of black beauty and
female agency during the genre’s short reign. Onscreen,Whoopi Goldberg plays
with and against these iterations of black womanhood—sometimes subverting
and sometimes reifying problematic constructions. While Goldberg’s personae
offer unique voices for comedic sociopolitical discourse, I would argue that the
lineage of their divadom can be traced back to the humor of black women,
who—onstage and around the kitchen table—offered their reflections on their
American condition. Goldberg is not the only comic presence to play with
expectations and to use humor to forward both critique and complacency.
Indeed, Jackie “Moms” Mabley and Pearl Bailey are two such black female
comic figures who, while not achieving either the industrial success or widespread notoriety of Goldberg, managed to cross over to the mainstream promised land with their divadom intact. If, indeed, as Valerie Smith states, “by
reading intersectionally,” one might ascertain “the ways racism, misogyny,
homophobia, and class discrimination have functioned historically and in the
present to subordinate all black people and all women,” one might also be able
to address the manner in which industrial and cultural practices play out in the
movement of mediated images (like comic personae) and the ways in which the
images themselves are in conversation with multiple forms of limitation and/or
subjugation generated by those aforementioned practices.16 While the rewards
for crossover—in terms of exposure, industrial cachet, and fiscal remuneration—
are not insignificant, neither is the price of the ticket, determined by American
taste culture as well as the times.Although Bailey, Goldberg, and Mabley thrived
in a male-dominated genre, the terms of success, like the times themselves,
offered unique struggles and unexpected opportunities.
At first glance, race and humor might be seen as the only qualities that join
Pearl Bailey, Moms Mabley, and Whoopi Goldberg. Bailey’s Pearlie Mae persona
blended lackadaisically saucy sexuality with “down-home” acceptance (and,
even celebration) of the sociopolitical status quo. As Dorothy Gilliam noted in
her review of Bailey’s Between You and Me:A Heartfelt Memoir on Learning, Loving,
and Living, Bailey “used humor to communicate her view of the world as a joyous, harmonious place that had no great problems or tensions.”17 Mabley
adopted the wise, folksy, and risqué “Moms” persona to speak to social and
political issues not seen to be within the purview of female comedians during
her five decades in show business—from Chitlin’ Circuit to Carnegie Hall.“Her
ability to move from folksy homilies to ribald double entendre and on to social
and political satire was remarkable. Perhaps more than any of the other early
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Apollo comics, she foreshadowed the shift to direct social commentary and
stand-up techniques that would define humor.”18 Like the multiple and multifaceted personae of Goldberg, Bailey and Mabley each possessed a distinctive
style that captivated audiences across boundaries of class and color, each used
humor tied to her respective era to illuminate her worldview, and each was able,
within the limits of her chosen medium and personae, to articulate an idiosyncratic, sociopolitically, socioculturally informed brand of comedic discourse.
While one might place Goldberg to the left of the political spectrum, Bailey on
the right, and Mabley somewhere in the (liberal-leaning) middle, their bodies
of work and the working of their bodies (how they were visually constructed)
speak to historical constructions of black womanhood. Both Bailey and Mabley
have merited studies of their own; however, for the purposes of this study their
comic kinship with Goldberg will be examined in relationship to their articulations of sexual and political agency and integrationist Americanism, respectively, as well as, of course, their shared diva status and the audience and
industrial understanding of that construct.
Remembrance s of Divas Past, Part I:
Moms Mabley
Elsie A.Williams, in her extensive study The Humor of Jackie “Moms” Mabley:
An African American Comedy Tradition, captures the comic’s status as one who has
both mined the history of black humor and sets the trajectory for its future.
Mabley made “extensive use of homespun folk imagery, colloquial sayings,
stories and jokes commonly known by the African American community—a
body of lore which points to the perpetuation of a cultural tradition,” while her
“womanist stance provided [her] with the strength and character to define her
persona and to establish herself as free to say what others of her gender, race and
time often had to suppress.”19 Jackie “Moms” Mabley took over five decades to
cross over. Mabley’s “Moms” persona was born on the vaudeville stages of the
Theater Owners’ Booking Association (the black venues of the Chitlin’ Circuit)
while she was still in her twenties and was honed for more than thirty years in
performances at the crown jewel of the black theater world, the Apollo Theater
in Harlem. By the time Dick Gregory did his famous stint at the Playboy Club
in Chicago in 1961, Moms Mabley, using the granny persona as a means to
soften her cutting sociocultural critiques (and to lighten the “blue” of some of
her more salacious material), also proved to be primed for crossover success—
only forty years after she started working on the TOBA circuit. “Her matronly,
offbeat appearance and down-home ruminations about politics and the Civil
Rights movement, and her fondness for younger men, were perfectly suited to
the club’s racy image.”20
In the years that followed this appearance Mabley’s crossover success, which
had been a long time in coming, was impressive: after her auspicious debut
album, Moms Mabley at the UN, she made more than twenty recordings on the
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Chess label and remains the highest charting comedienne on Billboard.21
As Williams notes:“With the integrated audiences of the sixties and seventies, the
comedian continued to perform, basically, the same kind of folk humor that she
had developed on the earlier ‘chitlin’ circuit,’ where the boundary of segregation
made the question of boundary practically irrelevant.”22 Through the Moms persona Mabley retained her comic voice in the crossing from TOBA venues to
white main stages and beyond—onto the stage of traditional television variety
and talk shows (The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show), as well as those
with varying degrees of countercultural hipness (The Flip Wilson Show, Rowan and
Martin’s Laugh-In, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour).With the exception of
lightening the blueness of her “old man” material, Moms remained Moms on the
small screen, which solidified her persona and limited her options. Like Goldberg, her black comic diva daughter, Mabley’s discursive choices, in terms of the
construction of her persona and the content of comedy, played with audience
expectations and won popular acclaim. Both comics were also inherently constrained not only by their times but by the multiple and conflicting ideological
impulses that inflected the choices in their comedic discourse.
Interestingly, as with Goldberg, there was subversiveness built into Mabley’s
choices—both of name and of the purposefully desexualized (in Goldberg’s
case, androgynous) construction of gender.Whereas there was a certain arbitrary
(and, arguably, anarchic) component to Goldberg’s choice of moniker, Loretta
Mary Aiken became Jackie Mabley in response to the actions of two men in her
life: a brother, who expressed his embarrassment about his sister’s life on the
boards, and her first boyfriend, whom she said took so much from her that the
least she could do was take his name; the “Moms” nickname was given to her
because of the maternal streak that endeared her to fellow performers on the
TOBA circuit. Furthermore, after a forced marriage at fifteen to a much older
man, who provided the fodder for her myriad “old man” jokes series, Mabley’s
choice to take the name of her ill-treating beau, not because it was given as a
part of wedlock but rather because he “owed” her something, signaled the feminist underpinnings of her persona—as did her choice to construct her appearance. Goldberg’s consistent choice of baggy unisex clothing corresponds to
Moms’ attire, which was, arguably, suggestive of a mammy of sorts (frumpy,
oversized housedresses, mismatched colorful clothing, floppy hats, socks with
slippers) in that neither had made a fashion choice intended to construct their
bodies as objects of desire—rather, they had purposefully covered their bodies
in ways that made their female sexuality unobtrusive.
The physicality of their personae seemed intended to contrast directly with
the content of their comedy: for the early onstage Goldberg persona her body
was a sort of tabula rasa on which she detailed the characters she embodied, with
her dark-skinned, dreadlocked androgyny acting as their counterpoint—whether
the Surfer Girl or Fontaine. Mabley, on the other hand, modeling “Moms”
physically after her own grandmother, constructed a purposefully desexualized
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persona with touches of both masochism and pathos: the fact that the only thing
that “an old man can do for [her] is to deliver a message from a young man” does
not negate the frequent waves of self-deprecating and self-denigrating humor. It
does not seem an intellectual stretch to hypothesize that the act of taking on the
“Moms” persona at such a young age was an extension of Mabley’s lived experiences—many of which had robbed Loretta Mary Aiken of both her youth and
her innocence.23 The disparity between the libidinous nature of her monologues
(often on the merits of young men and the deficiencies of the old) and her
rubbery-faced mugging, gravel-voiced delivery, and desexualized appearance did
not diminish the liberatory potential of her comedic discourse, as illustrated in
this passage crediting her grandmother for her “hipness”:
I never will forget my granny. . . . You know who hipped me, my greatgrandmother. Her name was Harriet Smith; she lived in Brevard, North
Carolina. This is the truth! She lived to be 118 years old. And you wonder
why Moms is hip today? Granny hipped me. She said, they lied to the rest
of them, but I’m not gonna let you be dumb. I’m gonna tell you the truth.
In fact when they’d tell me them fairy lies, Granny’d tell me the truth about
it. One day she’s sitting out on the porch and I said,“Granny, how old does
a, does a woman get before she don’t want no more boyfriends?” She was
around 106 then. She said, “I don’t know, honey, you’ll have to ask somebody older than me.”
By foregrounding both her sexual agency and autonomy from what had to be
seen as a highly marginalized position, Mabley forwarded a commonsense
feminist agenda “allow[ing] for public discussion of the female’s sexual needs
and . . . focus[ing] on the inadequacy of the [usually old] male to fulfill such
needs, both off-limits as subjects in comedy routines by women until very
recently.”24
Despite the sometimes socially defiant content of her act, Mabley’s comedic
agenda was varied and, at times, also supported a sociopolitical status quo. In the
introduction for one of her song-as-position papers, “Pray, Little Children,
Pray,” on Moms the Word, which was fundamentally a musical indictment of the
1962 Supreme Court’s decision banning state mandated prayer,25 Mabley made
clear her willingness to speak her mind regardless of whether her particular
stance was particularly popular with her audience:“They did wrong when they
gave Moms freedom of speech ’cause I’m gonna tell the truth about it.Although
they might put Moms in jail for what I’m gonna say—but by God, I’m gonna
say it anyway.” Furthermore, in the Cold Warrior years of the mid-sixties (and
later on the aforementioned album) Mabley’s persona gained a new dimension,
constructed as doing “government business . . . lyin’ and spyin,’ you dig. Got
Khruschev and the Chinaman [Mao Tse-tung] fussin’,” she annunciated a
clearly anticommunist sentiment and reified African American ties to the
Democratic Party, in general, and, perhaps less enthusiastically, to Lyndon Baines
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Johnson.26 In her commentaries on civil rights Mabley’s adherence to the
revolutionary directives of the movement was unequivocal. Her observations
about both racial violence and the struggles of black activists were encased in
vaudevillian-styled joke series, which provided pointed critique within the
guise of old-fashioned entertainment, as exemplified on her album Moms at the
White House:
Colored fellow down home died. Pulled up to the gate. St. Peter look at
him, say, “What do you want?” “Hey man, you know me. Hey, Jack, you
know me. I’m old Sam Jones. Old Sam Jones, man, you know me. Used to
be with the NAACP, you know, CORE and all that stuff, man, marches,
remember me? Oh, man, you know me.” He just broke down there, “You
know me.” He looked in his book. “Sam Jones,” he say, “no, no you ain’t
here, no Sam Jones.” He said,“Oh, man, yes, I am; look there.You know me.
I’m the cat that married that white girl on the Capitol steps of Jackson,
Mississippi.” He said, “How long ago has that been?” He said, “About five
minutes ago.”
While the light blueness of her humor and the barely disguised sociopolitical commentary may seem mild by contemporary standards, Moms
Mabley was an innovative force in American comedy. As a veteran of both the
Chitlin’ Circuit and the overt discrimination and racism its performers experienced, Mabley created a comic persona informed by the sensibility of the trickster, common in African and African American folklore, and by utilizing verbal
sleight of hand, she simultaneously employed and critiqued those archetypal
constructions for her own purposes. In other words, her persona still operated
within a stone’s throw of the mammy, thus supplying some degree of comfort
to audiences to whom the minstrel archetypes still appealed, but the content of
her comedy was inflected by a mitigated sense of rebellion. She constructed a
comic persona that subverted long-held social predispositions as the desexualized, alternately cantankerous and kindly sort of revisionist mammy, who uses
comedic strategies associated with masculine forms of black humor (playing
“the dozens” and “signifying”). Through this construction she positioned herself not simply within the black comic traditions of the past, in which the critique of mainstream America had to be coded and hidden, but also, in the spirit
of the civil rights era, within a new form of direct comedic sociopolitical discourse, in which the voices of marginalized people—including black women—
could be heard.
Cinematic Conve rg e nc e s: De-sexe d,
De-rac e d—Moms, Whoopi, and Age ncy
Although Jackie Mabley made her big-screen debut in the small role of
Marcella in the 1933 version of The Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson, her
big-screen time was minimal. She made only six films in her career of almost
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six decades, three of which were race-film versions of skits in her vaudeville act,
Big Timers (1945), Killer Diller (1948), and Boarding House Blues (1948), and all
were made before the beginning of the civil rights movement. In these early
films, as well as in the concert film of a 1969 black music festival held in New
York’s Yankee Stadium, It’s Your Thing (1970), where Mabley delivered a particularly poignant version of the pop homage to slain American leaders,“Abraham,
Martin, and John,” Moms performed time-coded versions of her comic persona.
Only in her first and last films was Mabley actually asked to play a role: as
Marcella (uncredited) in The Emperor Jones and as Grace, the title character in
Stan Lathan’s Amazing Grace (1974).The latter film is more memorable as a final
19. Moms Mabley’s first starring role and her final performance as
Amazing Grace (1974). Directed by Stan Lathan. Photo from Photofest.
Reproduced with permission from United Artists.
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showcase for the mugging and preaching aspects of Mabley’s persona27 and for
the appearance of black stars from the cinematic and vaudeville past like Slappy
White, Butterfly McQueen, and Stepin Fetchit than as an uneven social comedy about inner-city politics (with the system eventually “working” because
Mabley’s Grace reminds the parties in question how the system should work).
Perhaps more significant is Mabley’s positioning of both herself and the film
made during the blaxploitation age: “I’m not a Black moviemaker. I’m everybody’s moviemaker all nations and all colors. I don’t want to make any of my
brothers and sisters angry so I can’t say what I want to say about a lot of
those Black films. But Moms don’t make that kind of movie. Ours is a family
movie.”28
By the time Mabley made it back to the big screen, both her comic sensibility and her notion of blackness seemed slightly out of step with the post–civil
rights era. Grace, unlike her previous constructions of the randy granny/
mammy, was full of hopefulness and certainty that the sociopolitical ills of the
black community could be solved by working within the existing institutional
structures—absent was any edge or cynicism embedded in either the film’s narrative or in the nuances in Mabley’s performance. Furthermore, the ethos of
color-blind family entertainment puts Moms squarely in the integrationist
camp—particularly given the contrasts she makes between her film and the
films associated with black power–informed agency (Foxy Brown or Truck Turner,
both 1974), as well as those that worked with a post–civil rights culturally
specific comedic framework, like Uptown Saturday Night (also 1974).While it is
not surprising that civil rights era sentiments informed the notion of black
activism and identity in terms of Mabley’s comedic social discourse, the language of her differentiation between her film and the seventies black cinematic
fare, in this instance, seems oddly deferential. As though aware that this colorblind assertion was somehow controversial at a decidedly not color-blind time
in the nation’s history, Moms Mabley, comic diva, seemed reticent to speak her
mind.
In its previous stage and small-screen iterations, the Moms persona utilized
“mammy”-like dress and, to a lesser extent, behaviors (speech and gesture) to
present herself as one who could not be seen as a sexual object and, as such,
gave this familiar figure license to speak about sexual desire and acts because
there is no (perceived) possibility of her achieving sexual autonomy. Furthermore, Mabley, with her race simultaneously centered and elided because of the
randy granny/revisionist mammy construction, was able to speak to and of
aspects of the African American experience—without causing undue discomfort to mainstream audiences. On the cusp of the post-soul era, which begins
after both the civil rights and black power movements, the cultural, political, and
economic realities of life in the African American community problematize the
notion of overcoming someday when integrationist rhetoric did not assuage
fears and hostilities in Boston in 1976 anymore than it had initially in Little
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Rock over two decades before.29 Thus, one might assume that the notion of
color-blind comedy coming from a desexualized black woman, one that seemed
dated in the seventies, would have undoubtedly passed out of cinematic favor—
one would be wrong.
Goldberg, in her dramatic roles, has played her share of revisionist mammies: the Jamaican housekeeper who heals the wounds left by the loss of her son
by transforming the coming-of-age experience of her young white charge in
Clara’s Heart (1988); the stoic maid whose decision to respect the bus boycott
transforms her white employer’s understanding of the civil rights struggle in The
Long Walk Home (1990); the musically adept babysitter who transforms the lives
of her white family by fulfilling their professional and emotional needs in the
first of Goldberg’s interracial romances, Corinna, Corinna (1994); and even as a
free-spirited lesbian singer who is transformed by her (unrequited) affection for
her uptight white former real estate broker, for whom Goldberg’s character
becomes caretaker as she is dying from AIDS in Boys on the Side. In her comic
roles, however, as previously mentioned, Goldberg’s persona was often constricted in roles that were not intended for her and, as a result, the films featured
a desexed and deraced Goldberg.
Even in her Academy Award winning supporting role as Oda Mae Brown
in Ghost (1990), Goldberg, as the spiritualist conduit for the recently deceased
20. Whoopi Goldberg in her Oscar-winning role as Oda Mae Brown, the medium for
yuppie love, with Demi Moore (as Molly Jensen) in Ghost (1990). Directed by Jerry
Zucker. Photo from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from Paramount Pictures.
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Sam and his grieving lover, Molly (played by Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore,
respectively), besides providing comic relief in what would have otherwise been
a supernatural weepie, gives her body in service to the tragic white couple.
Interesting opportunities to play with both race and sexuality are squandered:
play with this visual of Goldberg, in a big bad bouffant hairdo (rather than her
usual dreadlocks), kissing Moore, in her eponymous pixie cut, could have been
a means to question the nature of love (à la Prelude to a Kiss).Taking the easier,
softer route, the hug and kisses shared between Molly and Sam via Oda Mae
begin with Goldberg leaning in to Moore only to cut to Swayze touching
Moore. Direct references to race were minimal and were not about being
nuanced: Oda Mae, clad in one of many garish outfits (even by early-nineties’
standards), bellows about “white men trying to kill me” as she beats a hasty
retreat. Given the narrative’s less-than-adventurous spirit, the lion’s share of the
film’s comedy comes from Oda Mae’s antics, which, although not the “Oh,
Lawd” full-body tremors of Mantan Moreland, still hearken back to those all
too familiar cinematic constructions of black folks and spooks. Donald Bogle
describes the sequence in which Oda Mae, who has become a spiritual entrepreneur rather than a charlatan after her initial encounter with Sam, is occupied
by an impatient spirit. Oda Mae, with great mugging effort, expels the spirit,
and Bogle, while appreciative of the “funny,” notes with some degree of resignation “the truth of the matter is that while we might have hoped that blacks
terrified of ghosts would now be consigned to the era when Willie Best popped
his eyes as Bob Hope’s servant in The Ghost Breakers in 1940, Oda Mae Brown
is yet another readily excitable creature, often lit up with comic fear. . . .
Goldberg warmly modulates her reactions, giving them human dimensions. But
an old set of stereotypical responses has simply been revamped for a new
generation.”30
The way in which Oda Mae’s body is used in service to white happiness
shows more than a passing similarity to the function of the mammy, as does the
almost absurd desexualized physical appearance of the character, a fact that
neither the warmth nor the humor of Goldberg’s performance can negate.
Goldberg’s comic persona was repeatedly positioned within narratives that cut
any possible sociopolitical edginess with integrationist sentiments in color-blind
comedic morality plays. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the 1992
vehicle penned with Bette Midler in mind, Sister Act.
Like Moms’ Grace, Goldberg’s Deloris Van Cartier’s construction was informed by a color-blind comic sensibility that seemed out of sync with both
post–King beating America and Goldberg’s own stand-up comic discourse.
Sister Act is fundamentally a fish-out-of-water comedy in a nun’s costume. First
shown as the bespangled Diana Ross wannabe in a budget version of the
Supremes, playing to a single unenthusiastic patron in a Reno casino, Goldberg
is made to look intentionally absurd—and of questionable musical talent. The
ill-fated romance between Deloris and Vince LaRocca, which ends when the
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former sees the latter directing a hit, is the plot device that hurls Goldberg’s fish
out of water; however,“it is worth noting race is a subject that Sister Act assumes
is of no importance to the audience,” and “nothing is ever made of the fact that
white actor, Harvey Keitel, plays Goldberg’s boyfriend.”31 The purposeful
avoidance of any recognition of racial difference is undeniable: the only line that
makes even passing reference to race is when Deloris questions the origins of
her new name, Sister Mary Clarence, inquiring whether “Clarence” refers to
Clarence Williams III, who played Linc, the black member of television’s Mod
Squad. At times, the color-blind ethos strains credulity—in the frantic casino
chase climax of the film, no one thinks to cite the race of the only black nun
in the convent as an identifying detail.
Given that the film was not written for Goldberg, when “race as subtext”
appears in the narrative, it goes uninterrogated. For example, one can easily read
the other inhabitants of the convent’s immediate fascination with Sister Mary
Clarence as a racialized moment—although their fetishizing of the activities of
her fictional “progressive” order acts as the unwitting signifier for the “hipness”
factor of black culture. When put in charge of the order’s abysmal choir,
Deloris/Sister Mary Clarence makes them into “chorus girls” with choreography and song styling influenced as much by gospel production numbers (their
sanctified version of “Salve Regina”) as those found on the Reno strip (their
retooling of the Motown Classic into “My God”)—although the influence of
the former is never recognized. Furthermore, as critic Janet Maslin noted, race
continues to inflect the audience’s reading of the film: “[Deloris/Sister Mary
Clarence is] scorned by Mother Superior (Maggie Smith), who disdains loud
clothes and vulgar manners. Scenes that might have played as mere snobbery
with Ms. Midler have the hint of racism, which might have been dispelled if the
film had only addressed it head on.”32
The elision of race is further codified with the progressive desexualizing of
Deloris. A nun’s habit serves even better than a frumpy housedress to establish
the character as fundamentally asexual. Despite protestations to the contrary
(throw-away lines like “and they don’t even have sex”), the adjustment to convent life was not rooted in a sexual being’s forced celibacy but rather in one
who loves the night life being forced to be good and go to bed early.The transformation is complete once Deloris has the priorities of Sister Mary Clarence—
willingly endangering herself (and, unintentionally, the rest of the convent) in
order to perform the “big show” for the Pope, no less. While, Sister Mary
Clarence initially exhibits flashes of chutzpah (moments of archetypal Whoopi),
there are fewer such moments as the film progresses. Once rendered asexual and
colorless, Goldberg’s persona in Deloris/Mary Clarence is comfortably contained—and that made for good box office. Reaping $232 million worldwide,
Sister Act is the highest grossing film in which Goldberg has starred and was,
arguably, her last film to win popular, though not critical, acclaim. Ironically, the
color-blind credo of Sister Act, released in May of 1992, was diametrically
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21. Whoopi gets the spirit and gives a little Motown-infused inspiration in Sister Act
(1992). Directed by Emile Ardolino.
opposed to the comedic sociopolitical diatribe Goldberg had delivered onstage
at Comic Relief earlier the same month.Although the times were decidedly not
color-blind, the comic narratives that got big grosses, on some fundamental
levels, needed to be for mainstream popularity and consumption. It must be
noted that “for African American audiences, [Goldberg’s] movies are also funny
but possibly alienating. Goldberg herself endows her characters with an ethnic
definition . . . through language, intonation, inflection and attitude. . . . But it
becomes frustrating that such cultural distinctions are often used only as points
of derision in these films.”33
Bogle’s frustration notwithstanding, given the success of this film (and
Goldberg’s willingness to conform her comic persona to mainstream cinematic
imperatives), one would think that she would have no difficulty in continuing
to be one of the few black female comic actors able to open a film.That has not
always been the case—and the reasons why are by no means transparent. On
one hand, the disparity between the comic film roles and her outspoken
comedic sociopolitical discourse, although apparent, might not necessarily
account for a decline in her cinematic popularity. On the other, her undeniable
comic prowess and the purposeful construction of her comic personae may be,
at times, in contentious conversation with the sociopolitical moment. Unlike
Mabley, who read such moments warily and tread gingerly in positioning herself and her responses to those who positioned her, for Goldberg, as the lines
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between person and persona began to blur extratextually, her outspoken nature
gave greater license (and fodder) for criticism and scrutiny.
Remembrance s of Divas Past, Part II:
Pearl Bailey
The kinship between the personae of Pearlie Mae and Whoopi may seem a
bit more tenuous than ties between those of Goldberg and Mabley.While Pearl
and Whoopi occupy opposite ends of the political and comedic spectrum, the
comic personae of Goldberg are clearly inflected by her unabashed liberalism
(which, only on occasion, actually informs her cinematic construction) just as
Bailey’s Pearlie Mae, while not directly addressing her unapologetic conservative political beliefs, invested heavily in the creation of idyllic constructions of
Americanism, where the discussion of race was simply deemed unnecessary.
Their personae were honed in their early stage performance—for Goldberg in
small theaters before heading to Broadway and for Bailey in Chitlin’ Circuit
theaters and, quite early in her career, white, as well as black, nightclubs before
becoming the unequivocal star of a Broadway show.
In their debuts on the great white way, as originators of roles—Whoopi in
her retooled Spook Show debut and Pearl as the first Aunt Hagar in St. Louis
Blues—each caused a sensation on Broadway. Whereas the former tapped into
the wellspring of her multiple personae, the latter, despite high critical praise,
only sampled a narrow swath of hers. Interestingly, each was involved in “nontraditional” casting coups when they took over roles in Broadway musicals from
white actor predecessors. In each case the “fact” of race was downplayed.When
Goldberg followed in Nathan Lane’s role of Pseudolus in the revival of Stephen
Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the casting controversy was as much about the fact that a woman was taking over the role as
the fact that a black actor was playing the role of a “smart slave.” Playing the role
with equal parts broad vaudevillian style (utilized by both Lane and the original Pseudolus, Zero Mostel) and sly androgynous trickster, Goldberg fit with the
bawdiness of the show’s humorous tone.When Bailey followed Carol Channing
in the role of Dolly in a black-cast version of Jerry Herman’s Hello Dolly, a production that was seen as a risky venture in 1967, the character was remade into
an ideal vehicle for the Pearlie Mae persona.The ad-lib prone Bailey enhanced
the original with a swagger and sassiness that Channing’s effusive Levi (and
Streisand’s Fanny Briced-Levi) lacked. Interestingly, Bailey bristled when the
show was referred to as “all black,” maintaining that she viewed it “as being all
[read multi] colored.”34 However, although the Pearlie Mae persona made its
way into her stage roles (although not, for the most part, into her screen roles),
the nightclub was its perfect habitat.
The nightclub Bailey, captured best on her “For Adults Only” albums, used
her act to establish her persona, which was described as “a girl who knew the
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22. Pearl Bailey, sassy onstage and screen for decades. Photo from Carol Channing and
Pearl Bailey: On Broadway (1969). Directed by Clark Jones.
facts of life but inevitably got her facts all mixed up.”35 This portrait of Pearlie
Mae as a woman who been done wrong (and has done wrong, too) comes
through, not only in the double entendre–filled songs but also in the asides and
ad-libs that play with audience sensibilities. More naughty than genuinely blue,
Bailey’s act, when brought to the small screen, retained many of the mildly
provocative elements that had won her mainstream popularity. By the late forties Bailey, already a nightclub veteran and having won raves for her supporting
role in St. Louis Woman, was performing on television variety programs like
Cavalcade of Stars: Starring Jackie Gleason. Described by Gleason as “the star that
outshone the rest,” when she came onstage, more than traces of divadom can be
seen in Bailey’s performance style. Her mannerisms were the same in 1949 as
they would be in 1970 onstage in her own television variety show—she is sassy.
Clad in a very feminine black strapless dress with jeweled bodice, tight waist,
and full skirt, Bailey is definitely not desexualized nor is her song selection,
“Good Enough for Me.” Alternately singing and talking her way through the
number, Bailey crosses musical theatrics with down-home earthiness:
There are lots of girls who will stay out late.
Why do they do that? They think they are being very bright.
But, not I. I say to myself Pearl be a lady. Be a lady.
That’s why I always come home every night except
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and sometimes it’s slow getting in on Thursday.
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When I settle down and get married
I want all of my in-laws to be
Simple country folk like the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys, the Morgans,
That’s not a bad selection there.
They’re good enough for me
You know the trouble with the world today is the women.
Women are selfish, they’re greedy, so mercenary . . . I hear a man
They want mink coats.They want sable coats. Can you blame ’em? Do they
get them? NO! they never get around to them. But I’m not like that.
When a gentlemen gets me a gift I want him to get me something with
sentimental value—something with a lot of heart to it that you can hold
onto like a parking lot or something like that.
Watching Bailey perform on her ABC variety show almost two decades
later, the shtick is very much the same—although the content has been made
even more family friendly. Her interactions with the audience, with asides and
free-floating “darlings,” create a sense of small-club intimacy in a large auditorium. Moreover, by her series premiere in 1970, both her clothing and her act
had become more modest: with higher necklines replacing strapless fare, pants
replacing full skirts, and Pearl’s pearls of wisdom replacing rampant double
entendre. One need only see the opening number of her series premiere to see
the convergence of personae (Pearl as Dolly as Pearlie Mae), particularly when
Bailey makes the kind of entrance one expects from a diva: with a chorus
singing her praises. Reminiscent of Dolly’s descent into that show’s production
number, “Hello Dolly,” Bailey stands at the back of the house in gold lamé
gown, diamond jewelry, and a chinchilla coat as an integrated group of chorus
boys, dressed as ushers in red jackets with gold braid, sing,“Here comes joy, here
comes love, here comes Pearlie Mae.” An usher hands her roses as she saunters
down the center aisle. Singing the chorus from another diva musical,
“Applause,” Bailey ad-libs freely between the lines of lyrics. Even a flubbed line
becomes an opportunity for engaging the audience. Bailey throws an aside
directly at one woman in the front row: “Can you ever believe this? . . . I just
blew the first two words”; she sings, “Applause, Applause, Applause,” adding,
“Come on, honey, I’m live,” before going on with the rest of the song. With
“honeys” and “babys” sprinkled throughout, the song, this version belongs to
Bailey as completely as the single roses she tosses out to the audience—and they
appear enraptured by her presence. The presence is diva but a comforting kind
of diva—making her audience at home in her theater. “Pearl never pushed her
humor to the point where it might disturb an audience. [Whereas] Moms or
Redd [Foxx] . . . seemed bent in driving up the wall with their incisive barbs,
Bailey . . . was always a soothing figure.”36 Her guests were her musical contemporaries, past and present: Andy Williams, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong. With the exception of a touching duet with Armstrong (clearly in his
waning years), which was filled with reminiscences about “the old days” on the
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club circuit, Bailey’s divadom was dimmed by deference to her “star” friends.
Bailey literally gushed about the A-list talent she had proffered for her series
premiere to such an extent that it almost seemed sycophantic. While this audience was clearly enthralled by the onstage Pearlie Mae, the viewing public did
not appear to be; the show lasted only one season.
While one might argue that this was due to the waning popularity of the
variety show, there were regressive aspects of the Pearlie Mae persona that some
found troubling. Whereas her moments of self-aggrandizement were normal
diva fare, her moment of deference, as well as her complaints about her aching
feet as part of chronic lamentations about fatigue from performing, like her
drawling version of “Tired,” which she sang in her film debut, Variety Girl
(1947), has more than just a trace of minstrelsy—acting as yet another spin on
the revisionist mammy, in this case, one whose “people” are working her too
hard. The coexistence of the diva and the mammy in the Pearlie Mae persona,
in actuality, corresponds with the extratextual construction of Bailey in American popular consciousness: comforting to and comforted by the sociopolitical
status quo, Bailey manages to occupy her own color-coded yet color-blind
space in terms of her persona and social and industrial position, respectively.
When one begins to examine how Bailey’s espoused ideologies and her personal politics were received on the broader stage of popular opinion, one sees
surprising correlations between the star’s mediated construction and that of
Goldberg, the comic diva on the other end of the political spectrum.
Ext ratextual Conve rg e nc e s: Pearl, Wh oopi,
Pe r sonal Politics, and (Inte r)Racializing Ways
As with many performers, like Goldberg and Mabley, whose strong onstage
personae define the popular conception of both the performer and her relationship to the era, the later iterations of Pearlie Mae, in the late sixties and early seventies, became a de facto poster girl for a conservative form of integration: like
the version utilized on network television during the same time period, it meant
there was only one persona of color. For those in the African American community who begrudged Bailey the “mammying” in her act, “her penchant for
hamming it up with Republican presidents” was even more disturbing. As
Dorothy Gilliam states in her review of one of Bailey’s books, Between You and
Me: A Heartfelt Memoir of Learning, Loving, and Living, “Sure, she’s an ardent
Republican, but many blacks wondered why she flaunted it with Nixon and
Reagan—presidents many blacks and whites considered downright hostile to
black advancement.”37 Not only was Bailey a welcomed visitor in the Nixon
White House; she was also appointed special ambassador to the United Nations
by Ford in 1975 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Reagan
in 1988. Her friendships (particularly with First Lady Betty Ford, with whom she
did a song and dance in Kraft’s All-Star Salute to Pearl Bailey) established her affinity with Republican administrations in much the same way that Goldberg’s pres-
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ence on the campaign trail and in the 1992 Inaugural Celebration did with the
Clinton White House. In both instances the comic divas maintained their
allegiance to their presidents, regardless of the changes in the political climate—
Bailey through Nixon’s resignation and Goldberg through Clinton’s impeachment.38 While one can find other female comics—black and white—for whom
the identity politics of their personae impact the way audiences do or do not
embrace them—from Ellen Degeneres’s coming out across media (on “The
Puppy Episode” on her series, as well as in Time magazine) to the explicit discussions of sexual practice by Margaret Cho and Sommore in conversation with
the sociocultural position of women of color in American popular culture.
For Bailey and Goldberg, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, the rejection of the prevailing racial label and the commitment to interracial relationships,
which was considered controversial back in each of their days, play different roles
in how both comic divas were seen inside and outside of the black community.
Bailey’s insistence that she had “never been hemmed in” by racial labels, and
her refusal to use them, seemed comparable to the declarations of racial autonomy annunciated in later years by Republican stalwarts like Ward Connerly or
Condoleezza Rice. Her “colorless” identity politics was rooted in a rehistoricized
and very individual notion of race relations and an “up by your own bootstraps”
American Dream ethos: “Growing up in the coalfields of Pennsylvania—You
can’t tell me that there was a problem with Blackness. . . . I don’t wallow in the
pity of what I am. . . . [Those who feel] ‘I am mistreated because I am this color’
then I feel sorry for them. . . . I am looking for this Blackness because I don’t use
the word, I don’t think it’s necessary. I think that’s a fad to go along with ‘I need
my identity, baby.’”39 Like many of the remarks made by Bailey on the CBS
interview series Signature in 1982, the content of her commentary and its rejection of blackness as a designation is not as significant as her unapologetic and
unwavering tone. Even during the early Reagan era the assertion of blackness
had cultural and political resonance—particularly within the black community.
Her “dismissal,” not only of the word but of both the recuperation and agency
embedded in the naming process as part of the “identity fad,” denigrates myriad
efforts within the black community to have some sense of history and cultural
pride—something about which Bailey seemed fundamentally unconcerned.
Associated with civil rights struggle and racial pride, black was the term that was
used to signify both solidarity and empowerment in the days before African
American became the (ostensibly) preferred expression.Thus, Bailey’s rejection of
the term seemed fairly consistent with her individualistic ideologies.
Interestingly, Bailey’s vocal aversion to black is matched in intensity by
Goldberg’s aversion to African American. The chapter entitled “Race” in Goldberg’s Book begins:
Call me an asshole, call me a blowhard, but don’t call me African American.
Please. It divides us as a nation and as a people, and it kinda pisses me off.
It diminishes everything I’ve accomplished and everything every other
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black person has accomplished on American soil. . . . Every time you put
something in front of the word American, it strips it out of its meaning.The
Bill of Rights is my Bill of Rights, same as anyone else’s. It’s my flag. It’s my
Constitution. It doesn’t talk about some people. It talks about all people—
black, white, orange, brown.You. Me.40
Goldberg’s association of hyphenated American terms with the denigration of
national identity presents an interesting thesis.Written in 1997, long before the
post-9/11 “patriotic” elisions of race, Goldberg’s chapter presents a separation
of national and racial identity that speaks to the complex construction of clearly
delineated racial and national identities.While no more problematic than other
discourses around the ideological power of naming and the significance of the
recuperation of blackness, the expansiveness of her assertion (that the term
diminishes her accomplishment and every other black person’s) adopts a tone
that is both unequivocal in its stance and condescending to those who view
things differently. Yet unlike Bailey’s feeling sorry for those swept up in the
“identity fad” of blackness, Whoopi’s rejection of “African American” also
encompasses a sense of both group identity and group oppression. One could
argue that the naming process is intensely personal, informed and inflected by
lived experience, as well as by multiple ideologies—clearly this is the case for
both Goldberg and Bailey.What is far more significant, for the purposes of this
study, is the way they defiantly frame and privilege their assertion of identity—
not in terms of highly personalized statements, which, given their personae, one
might expect, but rather as clearly annunciated ideological directives. One
should also note that Goldberg’s annunciation of blackness and the fact that her
comedy addresses the continuance of racism also makes her discursive case on
a social and political level. Nonetheless, both Bailey and Goldberg were telling
it, not necessarily like it is, but as she feels it should be.
As celebrities involved in interracial relationships, one might expect that
both Goldberg and Bailey have received their share of criticism from black and
white communities and one would be correct. What is far more interesting is
the disjuncture between the level of ferociousness of the criticism and the time
period in which Bailey and Goldberg’s life experiences actually occurred. It
seems that popular opinion, or at least the impressions given by the popular
press, reveals that during Bailey’s day, which was not necessarily hospitable to
either interracial relationships or the celebrities who engaged in them, her marriage to drummer Louis Bellson did not carry with it industrial or sociopolitical ill will. Yet during the eighties and nineties, when interracial relationships
were on the significant upswing (as was the almost fetishistic entertainment
press coverage of celebrities), Goldberg’s relationships with white actors Timothy Dalton, Frank Langella, and Ted Danson often fueled controversy and served
to delegitimize her position within the African American community.
Bailey and Big Band drumming virtuoso Bellson were wed in 1952, six
years before Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white
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man, would marry in Washington, D.C.; seven years before the Lovings were
convicted of violating antimiscegenation laws in the state of Virginia, where
they had hoped to make their home; and eleven years before the Warren Court
held that the Virginia statutes banning interracial marriage violated the equal
protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. While
Bailey’s stardom, which was, for much of her career, established in nightclubs
and theatrical venues (as well as in the recording industry), appeared to be unhindered by her status as part of a “mixed” couple, other black female contemporaries were not as fortunate. Lena Horne, singer, film star, and iconic black
beauty, famous for her films like Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky, married
musical arranger Lennie Hayton in 1947 but kept the marriage secret for three
years for fear of the backlash from blacks and whites. One might hypothesize
that it was the elegant Horne’s status as one of the only black sex symbols of
the pre–civil rights era, referred to as the café au lait Hedy Lamarr in her early
years in nightclubs and in her numerous USO appearances during World War
II, in contrast to Bailey’s Pearlie Mae persona, constructed as a down-home girl,
that offended both blacks and whites to the extent that the couple received hate
mail and threats of violence.41 If Bailey experienced this kind of animosity, she
chose not to share it in public venues; rather, similar to her discussions of those
who felt discriminated against based on race, she talked of the acceptance that
she and her husband had received and positioned it as the norm, thus refuting
notions of intolerance: “Lou and I got to sleep in Lincoln’s bed—a mixed
couple. Oh, dear.”42 Like much of Bailey’s discourse on race, she framed her
interracial marriage, and public reactions to it, as an issue only if someone, misguided by the “identity fad,” wanted to make it an issue.While the extratextual
construction of her life as part of an interracial couple may have challenged the
race-relations status quo simply by its existence, no status quo was ever the target of her Pearlie Mae persona, which might explain why, in a decidedly lesstolerant time, she fared so much better (industrially and personally) than did
Whoopi Goldberg.
Goldberg’s interracial relationships have become comic fodder for black
comedy, so much so that in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled the character of Junebug
(played by veteran comic Paul Mooney) jokes that the Hollywood blockbuster
that he would make would be a sci-fi film called The Last White Man on Earth
and that “Whoopi Goldberg and Diana Ross will be fighting over him.”While
jokes about the personal lives of celebrities have become progressively more
common in American comedy, in Goldberg’s case this extratextual reality is
often mobilized to critique her onscreen choices and the reading of her comic
personae. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the furor over the public
aspects of her relationship with Ted Danson and their romantic comedy, Made
in America (1993).As Jacqueline Genovese’s article highlights, the fact that Goldberg was, at that point in 1993,“the highest paid woman in Hollywood . . . [was]
not what’s making headlines these days. Goldberg’s rumored affair with her
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Made in America co-star Ted Danson has forced its way from the tabloids to
McCall’s and Parade magazines.”43
Although in numerous interviews Goldberg tried to turn the focus back to
Made in America, her first romantic comedy, the subtext often dealt with her relationship with Danson as well: “You know, when I said [to studio executives in
the past],‘Gee, I’d like to, you know, act with Dustin Hoffman,’ they’d go,‘Well,
you can only do a comedy.You can’t do a love story because nobody’s ready for
an interracial love story.’ . . . I think there’s been enough interracial couples
around.With a war in Bosnia, am I really going to worry about it?”44 Like most
of her comedies, Made in America was not written with Goldberg (or any black
actor) in mind. At Goldberg’s behest the revisions in the script attempted to
embrace both her race and comic style, as well as the resurgence of Afrocentric
sensibility emerging in the early nineties. As a result the interracial relationship
is not constructed in the conventional impossible-love context (the South Pacific
or Patch of Blue variety, for example), but it is not exactly endorsed either. Made
in America follows Goldberg’s Sarah Matthews—the owner of an Afrocentric
bookstore called The African Queen and the widowed mother of Nia Long’s
Zora—from her discovery that the sperm donor for her conception of her noweighteen-year-old daughter was not the ideal specimen of black manhood that
she had requested but, rather, the local, very white, faux-cowboy car dealer Hal
Jackson (Ted Danson). As is the case with most romantic comedies, creating
verisimilitude is not necessarily a guiding factor in the story. The mixture of
23. When Whoopi met Ted: Made in America (1993). Directed by Richard Benjamin.
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budding romance between Hal and Sarah (from their initially hostile banter in
his office about his role in Zora’s life and the flirtatious discussion of “how good
she smells” on a late-night walk after their first “date”) to the broad physical
comedy in the filming of Hal’s television commercials (first by a desperate Zora
and an angry bear, later by an angry Sarah and a desperate elephant) are not the
stuff of which classic romantic comedy is made; then again, the same might be
said of Matthew Broderick’s and Annabella Sciorra’s The Night We Never Met or
Nancy Travis’s and Mike Myer’s So I Married an Axe Murder, two other romantic
comedies from the class of 1993 that attempted to put an unusual spin on the
boy-meets-girl generic paradigm. However, neither of those films was subjected
to the critical vitriol heaped on the Danson-Goldberg vehicle—even before the
stars’ extratextual activities drew less than rave reviews.
Made in America, although by no means a perfect romantic comedy, garnered
more attention—particularly after its release—because of the flood of press coverage given to the high profile of Goldberg and Danson as a couple.The extratextual construction of Goldberg and Danson offscreen and that of Sarah and
Hal onscreen were in a fascinating dialogue with the times—the early nineties,
when interracial marriage appeared to be on the rise—and a genre, romantic
comedy, that continues to fundamentally ignore these couples. Made in America
is an interracial romantic comedy but one that, as Donald Bogle notes, takes
“precautions not to scare away any patrons with too explicit an interracial
couple.”45 Nonetheless, the reviews of the film—in the black and white press—
were decidedly mixed. Boston Globe critic Jay Carr lambastes the film for its
“lack of self awareness,” “off-putting manipulation,” and for “Goldberg and
Danson go[ing] at one another gratingly until it switches gears and turns goofily
sentimental.”46 Janet Maslin’s New York Times review saw the chemistry of the
couple as the film’s greatest asset, stressing the way in which the pairing of
Danson and Goldberg yielded “a funny, disarming and believable screen
romance, the first such movie role in Goldberg’s career.”47 While what Maslin
refers to as Goldberg’s seeming “warmer and more comfortable” in the role of
Sarah, the narrative seems to work against allowing the couple to slip into what
I like to call the “sparkable period,” when the romance of the romantic comedy
becomes apparent—not only to the audience but to the characters as well.
There seemed to be an ongoing deferment of this period, as Bogle notes: “The
audience is led to believe that Goldberg has had Danson’s child through artificial insemination, certainly not physical contact! Just when it appears that Goldberg and Danson will actually have a love scene, their romantic interlude turns
into an unconsummated comic romp.”48
Although the reviews in the mainstream press might have hinted at the
extratextual realities of the coupling, the black press seemed to focus more on
Goldberg, critiquing her choices not only in the film but in her personal life as
well.Yuseef Salaam’s review for the New York Amsterdam News is rooted less in
the film’s quality than in its ideological agenda: “Whoopi Goldberg’s new
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movie,‘Made in America’ is a continuation of Hollywood’s offer of racial assimilation to Black women. . . . The plot, like all of the white men–Black woman
romantic tales, has no Black men in Sarah’s life. Her husband, a Black man, is
dead . . . [and] the remaining ones are clowns—a clowning eunuch [Will Smith
as Zora’s best friend] and a silly homosexual [Jeffrey Josephy as James, Sarah’s
flamboyantly gay employee at the bookstore].”49 Like Salaam, who, despite his
disappointment with the film, praises Goldberg as a “beautiful woman . . . one
of the few Black women stars who has rejected fake hair weaves and wigs in
favor of her natural kinky hair and has refused to castrate her nose and lips (to
get white features),”Abiola Sinclair felt Goldberg’s appearance was significant in
terms of her acceptance as a romantic lead for slightly different reasons:“[Goldberg] is Black enough [in terms of] Afrocentrism and commerce, mind you. It’s
not that Whoopi Goldberg is Black but how Black! If she were a Denise
Nicholas or Mariah Carey, who is, as to be expected, marrying a wealthy white
man; if she had her hair straight, by nature or nurture, if she looked like Halle
Berry, the visual contrast would not have such an effect.”50
Her allusion to the role played by color politics inside and outside of the
black community reveals a certain quandary for black women in the industry—
and in the black community. According to Sinclair’s logic, one might assume
that it would be just as acceptable for Denise Nicholas, a light-skinned black
woman considered beautiful in Eurocentric terms, to act as the love interest of
Carroll O’Connor on the television series, In the Heat of the Night as it would
be on the big screen. I would contend that the answer is yes and no.While Halle
Barry has gone on to star in roles with varyingly problematic interracial relationships, like her Academy Award–winning role in Monster’s Ball, the realm of
romantic comedy—the date movie and, arguably, the most easily digestible
genre for American audiences—remains the domain of same-race coupling. In
Goldberg’s case the process of judging just “how black is she?” has double
meaning—as her extratextual existence bleeds into the reception of the filmic
text and its iterations of her personae. In 1993 Goldberg was in a no-win situation—seen as too black, in relationship to her constructions as a romantic lead,
and not black enough, because of her relationship with a white man, which was
considered more than tabloid worthy.The tenuousness of her position was only
exacerbated by the events at the Friar’s Club Roast of Goldberg in October the
same year.51
Using material written mostly by Goldberg,Ted Danson, in blackface, gave
a profane, racial epithet (“Nigger” and “Whitey”) filled tribute to Goldberg,
spending a great deal of the bit discussing “whoopie with Whoopi.” Neither
Danson nor Goldberg anticipated the fervor of the outcry against their minstrelparodying antics.Those who were offended took the stunt as a personal affront,
and the tone of their criticism—as well as Goldberg’s response—reflected this.
Talk-show host Montel Williams and Mayor David Dinkins were present at the
Friar’s Club roast for Whoopi Goldberg and were among the first to speak out
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against the “open insensitivity” of Danson’s performance. Dinkins—New York’s
first black mayor, who only attended the roast to honor native daughter
Goldberg—felt “embarrassed for Goldberg,” calling the material “very vulgar”
and stating that the jokes “went way, way over the line.” The most vehement
condemnation came, however, from the talk-show host, who stated,“I was confused as to whether or not I was at a Friars event or at a rally for the KKK and
Aryan Nation.”52 Williams, who is married to a white woman, with whom he
has a child, expressed the greatest offense at the jokes about “racially mixed
kids” and stormed out of the building after the first seven minutes of Danson’s
tribute.53 The black press also took Goldberg to task, not only for the incident
but also for the aspects of her persona/person that had been previously considered “suspect,” as exemplified in the New Pittsburgh Courier: “Goldberg, who is
Black but has taken on a Jewish name and white boyfriends, apparently to bolster her career, finds nothing disturbing about racial jokes being made, the casual
usage of the pejorative ‘nigger’ or a white man appearing blackface at a function in her honor. . . . Goldberg should not allow her seeming assimilation into
white culture [to] give her amnesia as to how blackface, a longtime staple at
minstrel shows, is a gross caricature of Negro people.”54
The New York Amsterdam News’s Abiola Sinclair was one of the few voices
that put the incident in relationship to larger trends in comedy (particularly
black comedy) in the early nineties: “As for these two comedians being stupid
and tasteless, they are not alone in that description. Too many so-called comics
are willing to resurrect the lowest in blue humor and negative imagery to
embarrass the Black race.”55 Her reference to the emergence of the black comic
content on Def Comedy Jam and the netlet black-block programming emerging
on Fox (particularly with Martin), while not lessening the impact of Danson’s
performance and Goldberg’s complicity does seem to recognize that there was
a lot of “cooning” going on in comedy in the early nineties. Goldberg was
unprepared for the reaction when she felt she had been “‘roasted’ with humor
and a great deal of affection.”56 Not surprisingly, Goldberg’s defense came in the
form of offense. Citing the no-holds-barred history of the down-and-dirty
Friar’s Club Roasts, Goldberg questioned not the content of the comedy but
the sensibilities of the audience:“If people on the dais and in the audience were
not aware of what the day was supposed to consist of, they should have checked
to see what the tenor of these roasts are, and then made a decision as to whether
or not they wanted to participate.”57 While one might question the wisdom of
the blackface stunt, Goldberg’s reaction seems absolutely consistent with her
sense of humor, of loyalty and of what free expression actually means to her. In
this instance the impact of Goldberg’s personal politics on the public perception
of her celebrity, and, by extension, her film work, reveals how blurred the
boundaries between the person and the personae had become for her.
While Goldberg’s public personae—outspoken, unabashedly liberal, and
resistant to being “niched”—often seemed to struggle with the roles that
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seemed only to utilize narrow swaths of “Whoopi” contained in fairly conventional narrative framework, it seems both telling and ironic that when a role
appeared (Sarah Matthews in Made in America) that did afford a certain degree
of convergence between the personal and personae, the reception of the text
and of the extratextual controversies—the film itself and what one reporter
referred to as “Whoopi and Ted’s excellent adventure,” respectively—were tied
inextricably one to the other. Moreover, the event at the Friars Club and the
subsequent outcry obscured the popular and critical opinion regarding Goldberg playing a role that challenged the ways that she had previously been constructed in film comedy: with all of its flaws, in Sarah Matthews, Goldberg had
been presented with the possibility of playing a multifaceted character: a smart,
funny, black woman, who was allowed some degree of sexual agency and personal autonomy.There was clearly liberatory potential in the Matthews character, for Goldberg and, arguably, for the comic representation of black women
when viewed within the context of a genre in which black women were traditionally relegated to the periphery of the narrative as either the perpetual
“Rhoda” (the less-feminized “friend” in the boy-meets-girl paradigm, to which
Oda Mae is, at least spiritually, linked) or as the desexualized and distanced
observer, who might offer comment but is essentially removed from the
romance of the comedy (like Pearl Bailey’s role as the musically inclined maid,
Gussie, who wryly comments on the lives and loves of others in the Bob Hope
vehicle That Certain Feeling).
Yet one wonders whether, even without the Friars Club debacle, Goldberg’s
reception as a character like Matthews would have been more than tepid at best.
The extratextual construction of Bailey and its impact on her persona did not
have a negative impact on her stage and screen presence, since, arguably, her iterations of Pearlie Mae, regardless of venue or medium, never posed a significant
challenge to her audiences. Goldberg, on the other hand, seems simultaneously
trapped and empowered by her personae, her personal politics, and the public
perception of them both. Both Bailey and Goldberg, in true diva style, clearly
annunciated their personal ideologies in relationship to their interracializing
ways—and faced the implications of doing so. In the end Bailey’s ways had minimal impact on either audience affinity with Pearlie Mae or her growing industrial cachet in the fifties and beyond, while for Goldberg they facilitated a
color-coding of the popular conceptions of her personae more thoroughly than
at any other point in her career during the burgeoning multicultural moment
of the early nineties.
In Black Looks, published in 1992, the year of the LA uprising and the year
before Goldberg’s Friar’s Club debacle (and the release of her first romantic
comedy), bell hooks outlined directives for the radical empowerment of black
women: “When black women relate to our bodies, our sexuality, in ways that
place erotic recognition, desire, pleasure, and fulfillment at the center of our
efforts to create radical black subjectivity, we can make new and different rep-
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resentations of ourselves as sexual subjects.To do so we must be willing to transgress traditional boundaries. We must no longer shy away from the critical
project of openly interrogating and exploring representations of black female
sexuality as they appear everywhere, especially in popular culture.”58
I would argue that, at that same historical moment and the years that followed, Whoopi Goldberg has endeavored to present and represent a radical
black subjectivity—with varying degrees of success. One might even argue that
the most recent iterations of Goldberg’s personae endeavor to simultaneously
embrace and subvert the parameters of their politicized nature while recognizing change—in social and political mores and her lived experiences. Undoubtedly, the extratextual construction of Whoopi Goldberg’s personae has resulted
in a certain mitigation of their significance to the development of black comedy–particularly in relationship to women in black comedy. In the age of the
narrowcast and the niche Goldberg’s crossover capability continues to separate
her from other black comic sisters. Nonetheless, as Adele Givens states, “Without Whoopi, there would be no ‘Queens of Comedy.’ . . . I’m just grateful that
she was there before me, because without her there would be no me.”59 Moreover, there are other black female comics for whom crossover is both a goal and
a possibility—one of whom, as will be discussed in more detail later in this
chapter, is Wanda Sykes.
New Mille nnial Divadom
In the first decade of the new millennium Goldberg has garnered high
praise and intense criticism—which actually describes the previous decade as
well. In 2001 Goldberg joined the ranks of Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, and
Jonathan Winters when she was awarded the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain
Prize for American Humor.The honor was bittersweet; it was presented a little
over a month after the events of 9/11, and the native New Yorker expressed the
national sentiment with great candor and sensitivity: “The events that hit our
nation hit us all hard. . . . I didn’t know where what I did fit into the fabric of
the nation anymore.Tonight, all the people who came here to this show remind
us that along with the tragedy, we must exist. We must be a part of life.”60
In the years that followed 9/11 Goldberg’s activism went into full
throttle—nowhere more significantly than in Democratic Party politics. Goldberg found herself at the center of controversy and criticism after her nowinfamous monologue at the Kerry/Edwards fund-raiser in New York in the
summer of 2004. It is not surprising that Goldberg’s statement at the campaign
fund-raiser, which played with the double entendre and President Bush’s name,
in many ways, could be seen as vintage Whoopi—irreverent, funny, pointed,
and, for some, of questionable taste. When she appeared on Hardball with Chris
Matthews in January of 2005, Goldberg stressed that, because the text of her talk
had not been made public, people were commenting on what “people would
think I would say.” Although on the program to promote a new project, when
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asked about her controversial use of double entendre, Goldberg recounted, “I
said that I loved bush and that someone was giving bush a bad name. . . . I think
it’s time for bush to be in its rightful place, and I don’t mean the White House”;
when Matthews questioned Goldberg as to whether she thought the joke
appropriate, she replied simply, “For a comedian, yes.”61
As a result of the way her words were mobilized in the opposing party’s
camp, Goldberg, from which the Democratic campaign and party pundits distanced themselves, gained (temporary) quasi-pariah status in the party and lost
her endorsement contract with the Florida-based Slim-Fast company. As had
been true in the past, Goldberg remained steadfast in her claims that it was her
right to freedom of expression, not the content of her comedy, that was at issue
here. Slim-Fast’s punitive measures did not chasten Goldberg’s activism nor her
tongue. By November of 2004 Goldberg was able to reflect not only on the
actions of the company that had fired her but also on the party that had abandoned her. “Slim Fast knew who I was when they hired me and made its move
without having the facts. Everyone else made the decision to back away—
including Kerry and Edwards. It’s indicative of what’s wrong with our party.”62
It is striking that, once again, in the face of public controversy, Goldberg chose
to take the offensive and make her position clear—no matter whom it might
serve to anger or berate. Always outspoken, Goldberg has continued her
divadom in the new millennium, although, one might argue that her choices of
roles and venues mark both departure and return for Whoopi.
Cinematic Whoopi: Portraits of Re st raint
Goldberg’s choices of roles in films like Kingdom Come (2001) and Good
Fences (Showtime 2003) can be seen as significant departures in terms of character and in terms of the industrial construction of the films. As she stated in an
interview with Kam Williams, “It may be true that there is some clout behind
the name ‘Whoopi Goldberg’ that wasn’t there before. But that doesn’t mean
that I can green-light a movie that I want to star in because my tastes are sort
of out there.”63 Interestingly, one could make the argument that the black-cast
dysfunctional-family comedy and the Showtime black melodramedy are the
first in Goldberg’s career that are actually niched—targeted for black audiences.
Both Raynelle, the not-grieving widow and matriarch of the Slocumb clan, and
Mabel Spader, a wife and mother of two, who slides uncomfortably into suburban assimilation, are almost the antithesis of the hyperverbal comedic roles often
associated with Goldberg’s big-screen personae. Deliberately seeking to play
comic roles that differ from those in the past, with the subdued Raynelle in
Kingdom Come, Goldberg challenges audiences—particularly black audiences’
previous assumptions about the comic Whoopi: “They wanted more and said
‘put some more “Whoopi” in it.’ But if I had wanted more I would’ve taken
another role—she’s the mother.”64 As Stephen Holden notes, “Her devoutly
religious widow, Raynelle, has harbored so much pent up anger at him that she
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calmly insists that the engraving on his headstone read ‘mean and surly.’ Ms.
Goldberg, giving one of her more restrained performances, projects an appropriate mixture of long-suffering wisdom and curdled sanctimony with her
Mona Lisa smile.”65
The same can be said of Mabel Spader, the female protagonist of the Showtime film, who slides into isolation and alcoholism as she is taken from her
comfortable working-class neighborhood to the tony suburb of Greenwich,
Connecticut. Set in the late seventies, the film depicts Mabel as being pulled
into the upper middle class by her black attorney husband, Tom (Danny
Glover), who is determined “to end the colored man’s losing streak” by any
means necessary—initially by taking (and winning) a high-profile case in which
the firm’s rich white client has set two black vagrants on fire. The progressive
disintegration of the family—daughter, Stormy, struggling to pass; son Tommy
Two, struggling to (covertly) find some sense of blackness; and Tom, becoming
more obsessed with power and status—and delineating himself from the “failure” of blackness—drives Mabel to the couch and the bottle (watching daytime
television with scotch in hand). Again, the performance is restrained and contained; as Mabel loses her sense of self and her connection to a community of
color, Goldberg plays the pathos with a light touch.
Interestingly, her female counterpart and antagonist is Ruth Crisp, played by
Mo’Nique as a derivative of Nikki Parker, her television sitcom character, which
in itself is a derivative of her stand-up persona. Crisp wins the lottery, moves in
next door and brings half of the hood with her, which inspires fear and dread in
Tom, seeing her as a threat to his “comfortable black” status and causes Mabel to
initially ignore her to avoid racial “guilt by association.” Mabel’s budding friendship with Ruth, at the film’s end, brings her back to (black) life and acts as a call
for solidarity among black women. Goldberg’s choices to play these repressed
characters—in a supporting role in the broad comedy of Kingdom Come and in
a costarring role in the melodramedy morality play Good Fences—speaks to her
desire to redefine herself on film and, perhaps, with the very community that she
is seen to represent in American popular cultural consciousness.
Not Ready for (Network) Prime-Time Siste r s:
Whoopi and Wanda
On returning to television in her NBC sitcom, Whoopi (2003), Goldberg
was adamant that the sitcom set in Manhattan actually be filmed in New York
rather than Los Angeles, thus providing a literal and figurative return for the
comic diva.66 In some significant ways, however, Goldberg was not the only
black comic diva making her way to prime time as part of television’s class of
2003. While Goldberg’s choice of recent film roles played against her personae,
the character of Mavis Rae, the one-hit-wonder songstress turned hotelier,
seemed to be the distillation of the most extreme aspects of Goldberg’s comic
persona: the hard-drinking, self-righteous, opinionated, outspoken, chain-
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smoking, intolerant of intolerance, unapologetically liberal (and anti-Bush) Mavis
Rae is Whoopi to the tenth power. Not insignificantly, there was another harddrinking, outspoken, opinionated black woman in the televisual class of 2003:
Wanda Sykes in Wanda at Large on Fox. Although dissimilar in terms of premise—Mavis as the Manhattan hotelier and Wanda Hawkins as the Washington,
D.C., stand-up comedienne turned political pundit—the convergences between
the character constructions, the series’ sociocultural milieu, and the ways in
which the series are infused with the comics’ personae are striking. Both series
present milieus that act as a microcosm of their city setting.Whoopi’s hotel is like
a model UN, with Nasim (Omid Djalili), the Iranian handyman/bellman; Jadwiga (Gordana Rashovich), the Eastern European maid; Courtney Rae (Wren T.
Brown), Mavis’s Republican, unemployed former-Enron-executive brother; and
Rita (Elizabeth Regen), his white girlfriend, who provides a caricature of what
it looks like to “try to be black.” In Wanda the milieu is black, white, and biracial: with Bradley Grimes (Phil Morris), Wanda’s black conservative colleague,
foil, and possible love interest; Keith (Dale Godboldo), her black dreadlocked
cameraman/buddy; Jenny Hawkins (Tammy Lauren), Wanda’s widowed white
sister-in-law; Max (Mark McKinney), the high-strung station manager; and
Barris and Holly Hawkins (Robert Bailey Jr. and Jurnee Smollett), Wanda’s biracial niece and nephew.
Each series is purposefully bawdy—the sexual innuendo is a dialogue
staple; each plays with notions of political correctness and defiance of imposed
values systems; each provides a sister-friendly iteration of a black woman protagonist; each has been helmed by impressive creative teams. For Wanda the list
of writers and creator/writers includes Sykes, along with another alum of The
Chris Rock Show, Lance Crouther, Les Firestein, and Bruce Helford. For Whoopi,
Goldberg enlisted heavyweight producers from some of the most successful sitcoms of the previous decade (The Cosby Show, Roseanne, The Bernie Mac Show),
including Marcy Carsey, Caryn Mandabach, and Larry Wilmore. While one
might think that these qualities would assure success, the final salient link
between the shows is that neither survived past its first season.
Nonetheless, examination of the series reveals convergences between the
narratives and the comic personae of their stars. Two particular episodes of the
series illustrate the spiritual connections between Whoopi and Wanda at Large:
each dealt with the personal politics of the central protagonist and her unwillingness to alter her beliefs or her actions in response to outside pressures. In
“Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” Mavis’s hotel becomes an unscheduled stop on
the presidential motorcade and, through a series of miscommunications (Nasim
tells Mavis that the Boss is in their W.C. and she assumes he means Bruce
Springsteen), Mavis is labeled a Bush supporter and provides a photo op for the
president. Like much of the series, the political content rests in the one-liners
sprinkled liberally throughout the twenty-two-minute show. After realizing that
it is Bush and not Springsteen, Mavis is horrified at having him in her hotel—
and by her unknowing comments to the press:
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Mavis: Bush is in my can?!!! I can’t believe he’s doing to my bathroom what
he’s doing to the economy.
After being invited to a reception for the president, Mavis initially decides
not to go, despite Courtney’s pleading that this would mean that he gets to meet
his hero. An argument ensues between the brother and sister about what the
Republican Party has done for black folks:
Courtney: They freed the slaves.
Mavis: You had to go back 140 years to find that.
Courtney: They have African Americans in the cabinet.
Mavis: That’s two hired, what about the other 37 million?
The rest of the episode offered more opportunities for Goldberg to be an equalopportunity offender of conservatives. On being congratulated by an African
American couple at the reception for “coming out,” she responds,“Black republicans make about as much sense to me as Jews for Jesus.” The black Republicans vocally object to Mavis being given “face time” with the president, and
both she and a heartbroken Courtney are escorted from the hall. Despite
Courtney’s earnest admission of disappointment and anger with Mavis, she
remains unrepentant, saying, “I had to speak my mind.” The three-jokesper-page structure of the series and the construction of Mavis as hyperliberal
afforded Goldberg, albeit briefly, a weekly forum to “speak her mind” and to
disseminate her brand of comedic social discourse.While the show played with
moments of political incorrectness, particularly in the dynamic between Mavis
and her “help,” the show’s tone, like Goldberg’s personae, forwarded a liberal
agenda addressing issues from racial profiling to the inadequacies of the current
administration (with a side preoccupation with ridiculing the New York smoking ban).
In her stand-up act Wanda Sykes, who has graduated from headliner in the
club circuit to headliner in theatrical venues, does not shy away from pointedly
political and anti-Bush sentiments. In her Comedy Central special, Tongue
Untied, Sykes addresses Bush’s 70 percent approval rating in the early years of his
first administration: “A majority of us were satisfied with the job the president
was doing. Which makes sense to me because he pretty much did everything I
expected him to do.The economy is in the toilet.We’re at war and everything’s
on fire. He’s met all my expectations.”The Washington, D.C.–based local political pundit show in Wanda at Large, however, seems fairly apolitical. For the most
part the critique is based in station politics, interpersonal conflicts, and Wanda’s
general intransigence. In “Clowns to the Left of Me” the episode veers into
Sykes’s stand-up act (and her politics) as she tangles with fanatical animal rights
activist leader Charlotte Rankin (Jenny McCarthy).After settling their initial difficulties, Rankin feels she has bonded with Wanda: “I know you. . . .You’re an
African American woman, I’m a liberal.We’re practically twins” and, in turn, asks
Wanda to introduce her at a banquet in Rankin’s honor and to “come and share
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24. Wanda Sykes from Tongue Untied (2003). Directed by Paul Miller.
your struggles.”The remainder of the episode is derived from an anecdote in her
first half-hour Comedy Central special—with the exception of a brief passage in
which Wanda and Jenny, her sister-in-law, are almost dying of ennui as the archetypal speaker drones on about how “she is woman.” In the stand-up version of
this story Sykes recounted doing a feminist event (“for free”), where she began
by calling everyone “girls” and asking them to give “a big hand to the men who
let them out of the house tonight” and ended with her having to be home in
twenty minutes because her husband expected to “have his dick sucked after dinner.” In the series version the blow job reference was replaced with an
impromptu salute to someone who has done more to bring women into the
public eye than just about anybody else: Hugh Hefner. Putting the cherry on the
offensive sundae,Wanda introduces Rankin à la the WWE: “And now, the lightweight feminist of the World, Charlotte ‘The Uterus’ Rankin.”67 Under her
breath onstage, Rankin forces a smile and calls her “just plain evil”—Wanda
responds, “Now you know me.”
One might argue that these series represent fairly traditional sitcom fare. It
could also be said that, in sociopolitical terms, Whoopi and Wanda at Large provide comic fare that is pedantic and pedestrian, respectively. Despite these narrative flaws, however, both series, inculcated with the comic voices of their black
female comic stars, are industrially significant—perhaps more so for Sykes than
for Goldberg.
Wanda at Large, which was given a fatal Friday-night, 8 p.m. timeslot, was
the first network sitcom venture for Sykes, whose humor may well be better
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suited for cable. Her guest appearances on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, while
sporadic, have received rave reviews and have positioned her within a highly
successful piece of “quality television” programming. Larry David’s wry, offbeat
humor that informs Curb Your Enthusiasm allows guest star Sykes to play herself
on the celebrity reality sitcom, which provides a hospitable environment for
Wanda’s comic exasperation at the neuroses of both Larry and her television
best friend, David’s onscreen wife, Cheryl (played by Cheryl Hines). The same
is true of her feature segments on HBO’s Inside the NFL, which may have acted
as the inspiration for the offset, stunt-driven sequences of the Fox sitcom.
Nevertheless, Sykes’s presence on HBO and in her current Comedy Central
quasi-reality series, Wanda Does It, which showcases its slightly egocentric star
declaring her ability (and willingness) to do just about any job, reveals an important aspect of Sykes’s comic personae—her crossover capability.
Whereas Goldberg, from the very beginning of her career, was engaged in
crossover, Sykes’s early association with The Chris Rock Show (as a writer on the
Emmy Award–winning creative staff and as cast member) positioned her within
a black comedy elite, thus providing her with a degree of cultural cachet and
legitimacy with black audiences that (arguably) continues to elude Goldberg.
Sykes’s comic persona with its candid conversational and contentious sociocultural critique has the edginess of Goldberg’s early work, but the ease of delivery is strangely reminiscent of Moms Mabley’s when she took on the role of
storyteller as truth-teller. Capturing the nuances and inflections of black vernacular speech, Sykes’s voice, often brassy and a bit curt, speaks across cultural
boundaries without seeming to make an effort to do so. Sykes emits a comfortable sexuality and self-assurance that shows no sign of either self-deprecation or
self-denigration—neither too grateful to be in front of an audience or too
haughty to play to the crowd. Like the comic with whom she is most closely
associated, Chris Rock, and her comic diva predecessor, Goldberg, Sykes has
crafted a distinct comic persona that, onstage, has the potential to reach and
appeal to multiple audiences without contorting her voice or diluting the content of the comedy. However, as can be seen in the perusal of Goldberg’s comic
filmography, even the most distinctive persona can be the square peg shoved into
the round hole of mainstream American comedy; Sykes’s performances in supporting roles in mainstream comedies, Monster-in-Law, with Jennifer Lopez and
Jane Fonda; and In the Pink, with Tim Allen, Cher, and Bette Midler, will provide
a better indication of how she will survive the comedic middle passage. Nonetheless, one can safely assert that Sykes is a crossover comic diva-in-training.
Conc lusion: Whoopi Returns
When one looks at the comic personae of Goldberg, now a veteran of
crossover divadom, in the latter half of the millennium’s first decade, it appears
to be in both an introspective and retrospective period. It seems somehow appropriate to have endeavored to reassess and reread Goldberg’s comic personae, her
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body of work, and its reflection and refraction of blackness and womanhood in
the same year that Goldberg returns to the text that marked the moment of
Whoopi. Goldberg’s return to the Lyceum Theater in November of 2004 marked
the twentieth anniversary of her landmark one-woman show. In Whoopi Live
Goldberg revisited the characters that she had embodied in the retooled Spook
Show in 1984. Along with the Surfer Girl, the Crippled Girl, the Little Girl with
the Long Luxurious Blond Hair, Goldberg added Lurleen, “a menopausal Texas
matron, who provides personal hygiene products and reflections on a suicide
attempt.”68 The longest monologue of the new Whoopi Live belonged, as it did
before, to Fontaine, Goldberg’s male junkie alter ego. In this iteration of Fontaine
the ex-junkie is a junkie again. Speaking through Fontaine, Goldberg immediately launches into an attack on the Bush administration, which acts as his justification for his relapse:“We had a president who lied about getting some and we
impeached him.We got a president who lied about all kinds of shit. And people
are dying. And we put him back. And I thought, ‘I need more drugs.’” In his
review Charles Isherwood noted that Fontaine’s friendly discourse with the
audience “evolves into a preachy lecture, and long before its conclusion, the pretense that we are being treated to the character’s opinions rather than the performer’s becomes transparent.”69 While admittedly saddened by the thought that
the Fontaine/Goldberg persona that had previously acted as such an ideal vehicle for her comedic sociopolitical discourse was no longer effective, I was not
surprised by Isherwood’s conclusion. Given that the boundaries between Goldberg’s personae and person have been in varying levels of collapse for over a
decade, how could Fontaine/Goldberg escape unscathed? Whereas, in his earlier
iterations, Fontaine had afforded Goldberg an anonymous voice through which
to speak, unencumbered by gendered or personalized presuppositions about
his/her political agenda, he now seemed to be entirely separate from her. Like
the New York Times critic, most in the audience at the Lyceum, or who watch the
special HBO presentation of the performance, will not be able to see Fontaine—
rather, it will be Whoopi doing Fontaine. Although this may seem like a semantic difference, it underscores the quandary in which Goldberg has been placed;
it seems that, in achieving the status of “Whoopi,” a single name recognizable to
supporters and detractors alike, the conflation of the personae and the person is
complete.The actor who stated two decades earlier,“I can play anything,” is now
always playing herself playing a role.
What may seem like an existential dilemma is actually rooted in Goldberg’s
status as crossover comic diva in the industry and in her communities. When I
began this study, I believed that by tracing the convergences and divergences
between Goldberg’s personae and those that came before (Mabley and Bailey)
and those who came after (Sykes), I would be able to discern how and why
Goldberg had achieved the status of crossover black comic diva while, at the
same time, being socioculturally and industrially disempowered. The analytical
path was far from linear, and the shifts in her personae were not simply causal.
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25. Whoopi Goldberg, hosting the Oscars, gives a shout-out to the “help” in her parody
of Gosford Park. Seventy-fourth Annual Academy Awards (ABC), March 24, 2002. Photo
from Photofest. Reproduced with permission from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences and ABC.
The individualistic, idiosyncratic, and overtly political nature of her comic personae, for which she was known (and, in some circles, revered), combined with
the sociopolitical predispositions—about interracial relationships, political
activism, purposeful androgyny, personalized gender and racial identities—frame
aspects of the personal as culturally, politically, and racially suspect. In so doing,
Goldberg is put into an even more problematic version of the representational
bind faced by many black women in the entertainment industry. The view of
her blackness, from inside and outside of the African American community,
from inside and outside of the entertainment industry, colored the lens through
which her personae and her work were viewed, judged, and classified—which
is exactly what Goldberg had consistently fought to avoid. In the end Goldberg
is a black comic crossover diva, but she also remains an anomaly—celebrated by
both the mainstream entertainment industry and the black community yet fully
embraced by neither.
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Chap te r 5
Dave Chappelle
Provocateur in the Promise d Land
The comic persona of Dave Chappelle is the logical end
point for this ongoing study of African American comedy. In many ways Chappelle represents the intersections of multiple comic trajectories in black comedy. His act is often observational, like Cosby’s, or perhaps more aptly, he’s like
Bob Newhart, if Newhart were black and had come of age in Washington, D.C.,
during the crack epidemic of the late eighties. Although Chappelle is a storyteller, who, with casual and almost lackadaisical candor, pulls you into his world
and his logic, the content of his humor often has the sly righteousness and progressive radicalism of Gregory and the outlandish insider truism and gut-busting
honesty of Pryor.Yet Chappelle’s comic voice—and the dualities in his comic
persona—reflects the dynamic, complex, and conflicted nature of sociopolitical
discourse in the post–civil rights moment.
While this study has made the repeated distinction between person and
persona, the dual nature of his upbringing—in a household that he has
described as the “broke Huxtables,”1 one that had pictures of Malcolm X on the
mantel and Dick Gregory records on the stereo2—seems particularly instructive
in terms of understanding how his emergent black comic persona plays into
and, some would argue, determines “new” terms of crossover and, in turn, sets
a new trajectory in black comedy. Chappelle is a late-phase post-soul baby, who
grew up and learned to rock the mic in Washington, D.C., in the late eighties—
after experiencing early adolescence in rural Ohio.
By the time Chappelle returned to Washington, D.C., after attending
middle school in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the culture of Washington had changed
significantly for its black residents: “crack had come out.” In an interview with
Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 2004, Chappelle recalled, “Selling drugs was like a
legitimate job in the high school that I was going to. . . . It was that context
[that] kind of isolated me—initially, and then when I started doing stand-up, it
was like I thrived all over again.”3 Stand-up proved to be Chappelle’s outlet—
and a way out. Tricia Rose described hip hop as “a cultural form that attempts
to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity
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and oppression with the cultural imperatives of African American and
Caribbean history, identity and community.”4 Chappelle’s emergent persona,
inflected by his experiences at this pivotal moment of the post-soul era, reflects
the inevitability of struggle expressed in Rose’s words. Embedded within his
comic discourse, there is a sense of wary hopefulness, self-determination, and
self-aware black pride. However, there also seems to be a sense of fluidity in
Chappelle’s persona that embodies the movement in his life across communities
and regions.
The dual nature of his black experience—identity formation in predominantly black and predominantly white spaces—also informs his comic persona.
Chappelle enjoys a sort of dual credibility—his comic persona is inflected by
both the Afrocentrism of the black hip-hop intelligentsia and the skater/
slacker/stoner ethos of suburban life.This dual cred allows him to speak for and
to Gen X and Gen Y subcultures in both the black and white communities.
Chappelle is simultaneously a part of and at odds with integrationist mythologies, overtly political and involved in established notions of social action yet
wary of the machinations of the political process. The comic is capable of
incredibly incisive media and cultural critique, as well as humor that is at times
more akin to South Park than to Boondocks.5 He is also committed to a multiculturally specific worldview and a fully articulated black voice. Of course, this
description could probably describe many of us at this post-soul moment.
Seemingly today, when the fringe has been centered—hip-hop is mainstream
American popular culture—Chappelle has become the poster boy of black
comedy. However, it is vital to understand that Dave Chappelle, arguably the
hottest comic on the planet in the new millennium, has been in the crossover
game for a long time—whether by accident or by design.
Having begun doing stand-up as a teen in the late eighties on the comedy
club circuit in Washington, D.C., which was “restrictive” in terms of the comic
color palette (with no “blue” and one black as a de facto booking guideline),
Chappelle learned to play within the limitations of the venue while not limiting his opportunity to connect with his audience on his terms. His big-screen
debut in Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) set the trajectory for a
film career split evenly between “black starring” comedies (The Nutty Professor
(1996) with Eddie Murphy, Blue Streak (1999) with Martin Lawrence), mainstream films (Con Air [1997], You Got Mail [1998], and the indie cameo fest 200
Cigarettes [1999]), and cult favorites with de facto crossover appeal (Undercover
Brother [2003], with Eddie Griffin, and the quintessential Gen-X/Y stoner
comedy Half Baked [1998]).As will be discussed later, Chappelle’s choices in film
roles map the development of a comic persona entrenched in both the black
urban experience and the latent slackerdom of Gen-X and early Y. His broad—
and overwhelmingly male—fan base cuts a wide swath through the lucrative
eighteen-to-thirty-four demographic, which affords Chappelle a wide comedic
playing field within which to hit and miss with his comedy.
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It is impossible, however, to discern Chappelle’s relationship to the day
without connecting his comic discourse to the aesthetics and politics of hiphop. Chappelle is like a comic MC. His comic oeuvre (film performances,
stand-up sets, and television sketches), varied and conflicted, progressive and
regressive, enlightening and embarrassing, parodies, samples, and remixes subgenres and styles of comedy. By examining the construction of Chappelle’s persona, his comic articulation of his African American experience, and its
relationship to the popular notion of blackness at this historical moment, his
relationship to the entertainment industry across media, and the tone, style, and
content of his comedy, one can begin to understand how this provocateur in the
promised land—the popular culture mainstream—marks a departure from and
a return to the tenets of black comedic discourse in the post–civil rights era. It
is always about keeping it real.The question is how is this real being read across
the American racial and sociopolitical spectrum?
As Hip-Hop as He Wanna Be
Just as scholars, critics, and folks on the street have all supplied myriad definitions of hip-hop, the comic persona of Dave Chappelle defies simple definition. Like hip-hop, it gives voice to this post-soul moment. Like hip-hop, it is
wildly popular—across lines of class, culture, and, to a lesser extent, generation.
Like hip-hop, it is always in danger of being misunderstood and misappropriated. One can see the ethos of Chappelle’s comedy in both Ice T’s assertion that
hip-hop is “everybody’s story . . . about capitalism and struggle . . . based on a
certain culture. And if you don’t like it you can kiss our mothafuckin’ ass,”6 as
well as in Chappelle’s self-espoused modus operandi of not holding back and
“danc[ing] like there’s nobody watching.”7 Chappelle’s comic persona undeniably embraces the insolence and defiance embedded in much of hip-hop,
but the style in which it is presented (particularly in his stand-up) is marked by
an easygoing amiability. He slides social critique to his mixed audience in an
easy, genial manner: it is just part of the story he’s telling.
In Nelson George’s seminal text, Hip Hop America, he compares the ways in
which Public Enemy and De La Soul convey their political agendas not only in
the lyrics but in the choices of their sound:“While P[ublic] E[nemy] looked for
sounds that articulated anger and contempt, De La Soul sought bemused offhanded noises and deceptively childlike melodies.”8 In many ways Chappelle is
to Rock as De La Soul was to Public Enemy: they are all talking about the
African American condition, and they are all reaching beyond the boundaries
of black popular culture for their samples (especially in terms of genre); they are
all articulating their experiences of blackness in the post–civil rights era. Interestingly, as a result of doing it to a different “beat,” as it were, they end up playing to and being embraced by different audiences.
Chappelle’s affiliations with hip-hop go beyond the fact that his entrance
music—on television and onstage—is an instrumental version of Dead Prez’s
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“Hip Hop.” Rock had Grand Master Flash for his HBO series, Chappelle had
Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Roots. The connection with “?uestlove”
and the Roots goes beyond professional ties; Dave Chappelle is strongly affiliated with Okayplayer, a Philadelphia-based online community and collective of
hip-hop artists cofounded by Thompson. In September of 2004, three months
after signing on for an additional two seasons of Chappelle’s Show with Comedy
Central (in reality, its parent company Viacom) for an unheard of amount for
basic cable—a reported $50 million—the comic hosted a “block party” in
Brooklyn. Chappelle envisioned the filmed version of the concert as the
Wattstax for the new millennium. The comic, who also produced the event,
expanded on the role Pryor had played in Wattstax: providing the comic narration between acts. According to mtv.com “Chappelle dropped a poem (‘Five
thousand black people chillin’ in the rain—nineteen white people peppered
in’), challenged a Mohawked man to an MC battle, and sang two songs as
R. Kelly, satirizing the infamous sex tape that show the R&B singer’s ritualistic
kinky side.”9 For this Brooklyn version of the 1972 Watts celebration of black
pride (which had featured R&B, soul, and gospel greats of the era), the entertainment was provided by Okayplayers (Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, The
Roots, Eryka Badu, and Jill Scott), Okayplayer cousin Kanye West, and one of
the most militant of these conscious rappers, Dead Prez. Arguably, the highlight
of the event was its finale: a reunion of one of the quintessential Afrocentric
hip-hop acts of the nineties,The Fugees (Wyclef Jean, Pras, and Lauren Hill).10
Chappelle’s block party, like his affinity for Okayplayers and his presence on
the covers of hip-hop magazines XXL and Blender, is yet another way that the
comic is becoming an advocate for the brand of hip-hop that might not make
its way into MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL). It should be noted that the love
affair with hip-hop goes both ways. “I am music supervisor for the Dave
Chappelle show simply because I am a fanatic for Dave Chappelle,” stated ?uestlove Thompson, “He’s a genius. He’s a comic genius.”11 More than simply
appreciating the significance of Chappelle’s work, Roc-A-Fella mogul Dame
Dash notes the contribution being made by the comic: “I think he’s good for
the community and culture. He’s the truth. He knows how to be political in a
funny way.”12 In addition, Chappelle’s Show offers a space for diverse forms of
hip-hop (beyond Usher, Outkast, Eminem, and Jay-Z) to be seen on primetime television, which, in a televisual landscape without In Living Color, Martin,
The Chris Rock Show, or The Parkers, is a significant contribution.
In his discussion of In Living Color, one of the first (and perhaps most critically significant) examples of netlet-niche programming in the nineties, Herman Gray teases out the series’“strategy of representation” and its heavy reliance
on rap music and a hip-hop sensibility: “Rap and hip hop are used deliberately
but quite strategically in the program to generate identifications across racial
lines.”13 While one might make the same argument for Chappelle’s Show, the
connection is more endemic than strategic: the comic’s persona is imbued with
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hip-hop sensibility—the aesthetic and the politics of musical genre are inextricably tied to his own. While In Living Color was informed by hip-hop, it
must be noted that the series’ cred is solidified because hip-hop is like a character on the show—often personified by the key figures who have become
either recurring players on the series—or recurring gags.
The enjoyment of sketches featuring Mos Def or the Rza and the Gza of
the Wu Tang Clan, and, indeed, the series as a whole, is not predicated on any
particular knowledge of hip-hop culture. It is here that the negotiation between
insider/outsider humor is complicated in some fascinating and, arguably, unique
ways. In this comic text, as in Chappelle’s stand-up, there exists another level of
pleasure rooted as much—if not more—in cultural savvy than in solely racial
affinity. This fosters a sort of de facto crossover, where the appeal of a distinct
culture product (like Chappelle’s comedic work or hip-hop, for that matter)
crosses racial and cultural boundaries because of, among other things, shifts in
taste culture or industrial reframing.
In referring to Chappelle’s comedic discourse, I would argue that it was the
shift in taste culture that led to industrial reframing. He was the right comic for
the right moment and seems to purposefully interweave multiple threads of
American popular culture—black and white. Speaking specifically to Chappelle’s
Show, which will be the subject of analysis later in this chapter, all sketches were
penned by Chappelle and his longtime writing partner Neal Brennan, who is
white. Thus, one must consider whether the comic strategy that informs the
series and taps into various bases of knowledge and experience—mining all
facets of popular culture—is purposefully multiple. In other words, one must ask
how and why Chappelle’s Show, like his comic persona, is uniquely suited for
consumption by multiple audiences—all of whom have found a degree of affinity, at best, or uninterrogated attraction, at worst, with the content and/or style
of his comic discourse.
Before undertaking a close analysis of his two premium cable specials,
Killin’ Them Softly (HBO 2000) and For What It’s Worth (Showtime 2004) as a
means of understanding his stand-up persona, which is fully articulated and yet
still evolving in the new millennium, one must look at the comic’s relationship
with the entertainment industry and how that inflects and shapes the construction and execution of his comic modus operandi.
Brie f, St range Trip from Big Scre e n to Smal l
For most comics the path from local celebrity to national prominence goes
through television. Whether in an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny
Carson or on Showtime at the Apollo, television has allowed emergent comic personae to reach beyond the club circuit and into America’s living rooms. The
idyllic path for a comic goes something like this: the initial appearance leads to
other guest spots, then a pilot, and then a series; the series leads to movies (and,
sometimes, back into television). Although Chappelle’s path to national promi-
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nence does converge with this idealized comic trajectory—having made stops
at many of these same way stations on the stage-to-screen-to-screen trek—his
journey has been both more circuitous and more direct.14 When one industrially contextualizes the cross-media movement, Chappelle’s popular culture and
media status becomes even more intriguing.
Chappelle’s trek from stage to screen was relatively direct: at nineteen (four
years after he began doing stand-up ) he was tapped for the sidekick role in the
least successful of Mel Brooks’s film parodies, Robin Hood: Men in Tights.Although
the role of Ahchoo, the Muslim second in command to Cary Elwes’s Robin
Hood, was neither the most progressive nor most challenging role that Chappelle
has played (it mostly seemed to involve channeling Cleavon Little’s “Black Bart”
persona), it did establish him as a young black comic with possible crossover
appeal. In fact, for the next decade Chappelle’s film roles crossed back and forth
between mainstream and black-oriented film. Although his turn as the wannabe
bad guy in Con Air served as a generic departure, Chappelle’s film oeuvre is, for
the most part, filled with “buddy” roles—and not necessarily the “lead” buddy.
Whether as the skittish former partner to Martin Lawrence in Blue Streak or the
smart-aleck employee to Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail, Chappelle became
known for making the comic best of small supporting roles. Interestingly, this
ability to “work the material” can be seen as being (at least in spirit) similar to
Pryor’s engagement in mainstream comedy—particularly films like Silver Streak.
Like Pryor, Chappelle’s ability to give performances that (however unlikely the
actual character constructions) appear to fit seamlessly with his comic persona:
thus allowing him to utter lines that would normally elicit the rolling of eyes
rather than laughter.
In You’ve Got Mail, as Chappelle and Hanks stroll through a construction site
of the latter’s new Borders-esque chain bookstore in Manhattan, Chappelle’s
observations—and deadpan delivery—resonate beyond the thirty-second
sequence, which culminates with the comic’s line, “This is the Upper West Side,
man.We might as well tell we’re opening a crack house.”The “hipness” quotient
in a Nora Ephron romantic comedy is relatively low—and Chappelle’s presence,
albeit brief, positions the film temporally—and culturally—not in a mythic, timeless (and homogeneous) Gotham all too common to the genre but rather in a city
that could possibly be “in the world.” While Chappelle’s small and supporting
roles in Blue Streak and Showtime were variations on the theme of “buddydom,”
they provide samples of different iterations of the comic persona that would later
fill twenty-two minutes on Comedy Central. Even as the archetypal mean-spirited, abusive comic in The Nutty Professor, the heartless antagonist of Murphy’s
Professor Klump, Chappelle moves with self-celebratory ease through a rampage
of insults with a kind of reckless abandon, making his performance memorable
in a film that, on all other fronts, celebrates Murphy’s comic versatility.
The salient feature in all of these performances is Chappelle’s snarky, streetsoft delivery.The quality often inflects roles that seem like stencils for “the black
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friend” in contemporary (mainstream) comedy,15 transforming them into
overdetermined and self-conscious parodies of those character types. This selfreflexivity in Chappelle’s versions is played with a wink to the audience (sometimes literally) in his two most prominent big-screen roles, which also happen
to be films that gained de facto crossover success, Half Baked and Undercover
Brother. In the starring role of Thurgood Jenkins and the supporting role of
Conspiracy Brother, the “buddy” persona qualities are combined with the
innate insolence and sly subversiveness that, as we will see in the next segment
of this analysis, inform Chappelle’s stand-up comic persona. Neither film will
be remembered as revolutionary comic cinema. Half Baked is a reenvisioning of
the Cheech and Chong stoner films of the seventies, replacing the two Latino
leads and low-rider iconography with a multicultural ensemble and a cross
between Dead Head and hip-hop culture; and Undercover Brother is a blaxploitation parody starring Eddie Griffin as the eponymous brother.
A product of Clinton America in the post–civil rights era, Half Baked’s
Thurgood, the good-natured stoner/custodial engineer (who clearly did
inhale), acts as the poster boy for Gen-X slackerdom in an urban space that is
mythically benign: the “real world” threats—even to the friend in prison—are
offset by a sort of stoned idealism in a chemically altered fairy tale.Within a film
that provides taxonomies of “weed” users (played by popular culture hipsters
like Jon Stewart as the “Enhancement” Smoker, Janeane Garofalo as the “I’m
Only Creative When I Smoke” Smoker, and Snoop Dogg as the “Scavenger”
Smoker) and his literal partners in crime, Brian (Jim Breuer), the Anglo deadhead; and Scarface (Guillermo Diaz), the Cuban wannabe gangsta,Thurgood is
the everyslacker, who happens to be black. In the film’s cultural milieu lines of race
and ethnicity are constructed as less significant than those of smoker and nonsmoker. By articulating that “in our world” these are the rules that apply, Half
Baked others the mainstream, “straight” world.
Less libertarian than libertine, the politics of the film reframe notions of difference along its implied insider-outsider paradigm, thus “naturalizing” racial and
ethnic difference in this Gen-X dominated world. This is not to say that Half
Baked is bereft of broader social critique—it just appears in flashes, embedded in
the “weed” humor shtick. In the film, penned by Chappelle and Brennan,Thurgood’s throwaway jokes reveal how racially and sociohistorically aware a slacker
can be—in a fairly sardonic and self deprecating way. For example, when “Scientist” (the name given by Thurgood to the researcher in his facility in response
to being called simply “Janitor”) tips the latter in high-intensity “weed,” Chappelle’s character volunteers to be a guinea pig for the medical marijuana study,
adding, “My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman, you know.” This seeming non
sequitur, which actually invokes the unethical Tuskegee Research project rather
than the barrier-breaking freedom flyers, is delivered with a certain degree of
insolence for authority, in general, and white authority, in particular, and purposefully provides an off-kilter condensation of African American history.16
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Thurgood, the literal voice of the film, is posited as an insider in multiple
subcultural contexts (African American, stoner, slacker), whose actions, including this moment of historical misinformation, are emblematic of a consciously
nontraditional ideological agenda. Selling drugs to liberate (bail out) their compadre, Kenny (Harland Williams), the only member of the quartet who actually
serves an active purpose in society (an effusively positive kindergarten teacher),
is hardly a “Just Say ‘No’” message; rather, it is countercultural. I would argue
that Chappelle’s character actively defies a singular positioning; after all, a sympathetic drug dealer is fairly hard to pull off—and Thurgood pulls it off. As
figures in a lackadaisical rebellion, Thurgood and his buddies exist outside of
mainstream culture—happily fringed. This construct, the subcultural insider
who revels in his outsider status, inflects Chappelle’s comic persona—regardless
of the comedic and discursive intensity of the role.
As Conspiracy Brother in Undercover Brother Chappelle is provided with a
character that is as self-indulgently subversive as he is paranoid—militantly
unhappy in his fringed status. Again, Chappelle approaches the role with a sort
of unbridled fervor, playing the paranoid Brother as a cross between a Black
Panther wannabe and a refugee from a late-night AM radio conspiracy talk
show.While purporting to question the actions of the Colin Powell–esque general, who has suddenly transformed into the archetypal Uncle Tom (including
abandoning political life in order to open a fried chicken franchise), Conspiracy Brother’s rant turns into an indictment of the ruling (Republican) party:
Conspiracy Brother: Name one thing that the Republican Party has ever done
for the black man.
Smart Brother: The Emancipation Proclamation
Conspiracy Brother: Okay . . . Name two.
Again the play with the notion and knowledge of history emerges as a key
element in the construction of Chappelle’s character, whose knowing and
unknowing actions undermine and underscore the claims by the black nationalist–informed character. Within the protectorate of the “Brotherhood,” the
fictional institution entrusted with protecting black folks from “The Man,”
Conspiracy Brother is seen as an extremist—and his hypotheses are suspect.
While further examination of Undercover Brother could tease out some fairly
schizophrenic notions of black empowerment elaborated on in the film parody,
let it suffice to say that the humorous ferocity of Conspiracy Brother’s tirades
about the white poaching of black culture, conspiracy theories (that prove in
some cases to be correct in their cinematic world), and unabashed (albeit stereotypical) celebrations of black pride provide character traits, sociohistorical contexts, and comedic devices that would serve Chappelle well in his future
Comedy Central series. Obviously, any comic, much less one who began working as early in life as Chappelle, would continue to evolve over the course of
fifteen years in the business; what is so interesting about the development of
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Chappelle’s comic persona is the ways in which his screen comic persona is
condensed and refined to serve his televisual comic persona. Of course, at the
beginning of the postnetwork era that was not the case.
For many comics the situation comedy acts as segue from stand-up to big
screen—which was more than slightly problematic for the black comic. One
alternative outlet for the black comic was provided by the surge of social sitcoms (including the ghetto sitcoms of the seventies starring established black
comics like Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son and new talent like Jimmie Walker
on Good Times), which initially showcased comedic social discourse before
degenerating into a resurgence of televisual minstrelsy and typical examples of
the workplace comedies of the mid-seventies. However, the virtual prohibition
on more than one black per any given mainstream sitcom made the conventional
route to the big screen more circuitous for the African American comic.17
Another established route, through Saturday Night Live, which over its twentyeight years has launched the careers of John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Mike
Myers, to name a few, and is widely considered the comic’s access road to the
entertainment’s A-list, did not serve the same function for its African American
“Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players”: only Eddie Murphy and, to a lesser
degree, Chris Rock have successfully made that cross-media passage as a result
of their SNL tenure. With the dawning of the postnetwork era the increased
opportunities for the second wave of post–civil rights era comics came from
changes in television industry that were more industrially than aesthetically
driven. Again, this was not exactly the path that Chappelle took.
As a result, the flow of talent into cable comedy programs, netlet, and network programming in the early nineties was unprecedented—that’s the good
news and the bad news.The increased interest in comedy performance and the
subsequent programming needs of burgeoning cable outlets coincided with
Chappelle’s early days on the comedy circuit in the late eighties and early
nineties. Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam on HBO and BET’s Comic View were
at the forefront of the stand-up boom and gave much-needed national exposure
to the hordes of young black comics inspired by the work (and the high-profile
successes) of Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Robert Townsend, and Keenen Ivory
Wayans, Hollywood’s new “Black Pack.” Chappelle was a beneficiary of this
surge, appearing on Def Comedy Jam multiple times in the mid-nineties. As
Chappelle noted in a 2001 interview about the realities of black comedy in the
early nineties, “Before Def Jam, Black comics were not getting a lot of exposure, granted it did portray a narrow audience of comedy, but it got so popular
the demand became bigger than the supply of talent.”18
At this juncture one needs to view Chappelle’s persona in relationship to
those of his Def Comedy Jam peers.19 While Chappelle’s comedy is clearly
informed by a “post-soul aesthetic,” so, too, was Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy
Jam.The series, the brainchild of hip-hop impresario Simmons, gave a venue for
stand-up comedy that spoke to an emergent black cultural moment when hip-
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hop moved from the fringes of American popular consciousness slowly but
surely toward the center.What emerged from this black comic space was a Def
Jam persona, the embodiment of the comedic conventions that moved from the
main stages of black comedy clubs to the niched market of a mainstream venue,
HBO. Like the great nephews of Redd Foxx and Rudy Ray Moore (aka
“Dolemite”),20 the godchildren of Richard Pryor, and the kid brothers of Eddie
Murphy, the Def Jam comics spoke, in purposefully outrageous tones, with acts
designed to challenge the limitations of what could be said on televisual main
stages. The Def Jam persona, driven as much by a “oh, no he didn’t” sense of
outlandish content as a comic self-determination, seemed intent on “flipping
the script” on the racial politics of comedic discourse. In this brave new comic
world the politics of racial differentiation were key in not simply bringing the
periphery to the center but shifting the center—making the margin the mainstream. Thus, the litany of “white people be like” jokes acted not simply as a
reversal but rather as a mechanism for asserting that “this is our world”—at least
in certain venues and certain media outlets.The performers of Def Comedy Jam,
from Martin Lawrence, Chris Tucker, and Eddie Griffin to future “Kings” and
“Queens” of comedy (Cedric the Entertainer, Bernie Mac, Steve Harvey, D. L.
Hughley and Adele Givens, Miss Laura Hayes, and Sommore, respectively)
embodied bawdy (and often physical) humor that reaches back beyond the
Chitlin’ Circuit into the conventions of minstrelsy—tropes that have historically
inflected mainstream comic representations of blackness.
Both Chappelle, who appeared in the waning years of the Def Comedy Jam
era, and Rock, who acted as guest (and guest host) during the series’ early years,
share with their Def Jam brethren the black-centered comic sensibility (and a
boundary stretching sense of decorum). However, neither their stand-up nor
their film and television roles carries with them the same stylistic (and, sometimes, regionalized) cultural specificity or the sexual bawdiness (often tinged
with misogyny) tied to multiple iterations of the Def Jam persona. For both
Rock and Chappelle the sociopolitical and sociocultural base of their humor
overshadows the blueness of their comedy. In other words, the “oh, no he
didn’t” component of the humor is rooted in their sociopolitical critique.
Nevertheless, the flood of black comics into the aforementioned cable venues (and the stand-up programs on Comedy Central after 1991), as well as their
slow trickle onto network and netlet television on series like Hanging with Mr.
Cooper, with D. C. Curry (ABC, 1992–97), and Martin (Fox, 1992–97) contributed to a (slightly) increased black presence on television—but only in
comedy of course. However, it was the netlet’s “black block” programming
strategies, first utilized by Fox and later adopted by both the WB and UPN, that
reset the trajectory for numerous black comics. The 1998 WB Thursday-night
block (The Wayans Bros., The Jamie Foxx Show, The Steve Harvey Show, and For
Your Love) and the 2003 UPN lineup (The Parkers, with Mo’Nique; One on One,
with Flex Alexander;21 Girlfriends, and Half and Half) mirrored the counter-
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programming strategies used in the early nineties by the fledgling Fox netlet—
exemplified by its Thursday-night alternative to Must See TV with Martin, Living
Single, and New York Undercover. Initially, Fox had allowed series to defy conventional generic boundaries in comedy—as seen in the dysfunctional domcom
Married with Children, the landmark animated series The Simpsons, and the
colorized sketch comedy series that revitalized the variety genre, In Living Color.
However, by the fall of 1998, all of those series (with the exception of the flagship show, The Simpsons), as well as black block comedies Martin and Living
Single, were lost in the passage from netlet to network, from “urban” audience
base to “broader” demographic. As Keenen Ivory Wayans noted, “Fox changed
the course of Black television unintentionally.They didn’t go out to make Black
shows, they went out to make alternative programming.”22
Even as one traces the movements of other comics across media, the sitcom
remains the primary televisual vehicle within which the African American
comedian can gain national attention. Throughout the nineties, black-oriented
situation comedies like Martin, The Hughleys, The Steve Harvey Show, The Jamie
Foxx Show, and The Parkers exemplified how the stand-up persona was filtered
through the weekly series into mostly black-oriented American film comedy over
the decade (Big Momma’s House, The Brothers, Booty Call, Barbershop, and Soul
Plane). The fact that the dual construction and dissemination of Chappelle’s
stand-up persona differed from his fellows also speaks to the multiple reading
and multiple constituencies that existed—and exist—for his comedy.
For Chappelle it was film, not television, that afforded him the opportunity
to develop his comic persona. Although as early as 1996, when black block
counterprogramming strategies had taken hold on the netlets (and some enthusiasm still existed for singular black comics on network television), Chappelle
had signed a series of deals with Disney (Touchstone Television) to develop sitcoms for network consumption, none of his offerings proved palatable either to
the comic or to the networks. Chappelle developed eleven pilots during the
decade of the nineties—only one made it to the airwaves. That singular “success,” Buddies, was an interracial buddy comedy that had a thirteen-episode run
on ABC. The show treated the professional partnership and buddydom of the
two leads, Chappelle as Dave Carlisle and Christopher Garlin as John Butler, as
a monumental feat—a victory of the civil rights era. Buddies, which presented a
“we are the worldist” narrative, complete with parental characters who depicted
the black and white regressive social forces (bigoted “white trash” mom played
by Judith Ivey and rigid “black pride” dad played by Richard Roundtree), was
a spin-off of Home Improvement, a sitcom hardly known for its progressive racial
or gender politics. “It was a bad show,” said Chappelle on a 60 Minutes interview. While there are numerous examples of this not preventing a show from
running a full season (after all, how long did Suddenly Susan run?), the problem
with this series (and the other eleven pilot attempts) was an inability to find an
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appropriate vehicle within the genre to allow Chappelle’s burgeoning comic to
be showcased. The fact that Touchstone continued to make pilots starring
Chappelle attests to the company’s belief that he was marketable (on network as
well as netlet television). However, Chappelle’s inability to find a “niche” in the
age of “niche-marketing” signaled that his comic persona was not ready for sitcom prime time.
By the late nineties the changing network/netlet climate made it even
more difficult to find an appropriate vehicle for Chappelle’s comic persona. By
1998 Fox had virtually gained network status and was, for the most part, out of
the black-block business. The WB and UPN were still looking toward black
comedy programming to open up the “urban” (read nonwhite) audience. Both
broadcasting entities catered to black viewers—seeking to fill a niche not adequately served by the major networks—at least in terms of the sitcom. A. J.
Jacobs’s prediction in his 1996 Entertainment Weekly article that “the bigger UPN
and the WB get, the whiter they become” (15–16) has certainly proven true for
Fox: nearly three-quarters of the network’s programming has no black series
regulars.23 The programming tides are shifting at the WB and UPN: the WB’s
teen wave appears to have peaked, and it has lost one of its only critically praised
programs (Buffy) to UPN, where WWF Smackdown has become its cash cow.24
While one may wonder about the fate of the black sitcom once all the netlets
“come of age,” the question of whether or not Chappelle could find a place
within the sitcom schema would soon be answered.
Chappelle, with Peter Tolan, who had also worked on The Larry Sanders
Show and Denis Leary’s short-lived and critically acclaimed series, The Job,
developed a series for Fox television based on his life as an up-and-coming
comic in New York City. With six episodes ordered and the show slated as a
midseason replacement in 1998, negotiations between Chappelle and the network fell apart when Fox executives, seeing the Touchstone-produced sitcom as
“too black,” suggested that the lead female character be changed from black to
white, in order to “broaden” audience appeal. Chappelle and Tolan walked away,
and the former spent the better part of the next year (and multiple appearances
on Late Night with Conan O’Brien) venting about Fox’s network practices:“This
network built itself on Black viewers . . . [This network view of ‘universalizing’
appeal] tells every Black artist no matter what you do, you need whites to succeed.”25 The Fox debacle, like Margaret Cho’s experience with the network
dictating what her Asian American experience should look like,26 soured
Chappelle on both the genre and the networks. In many ways, given the restrictiveness of the genre and the openness and fluidity of Chappelle’s comic persona, the lack of “fit” between the two is not surprising. As Chappelle himself
noted, “I tried sitcoms before, and it’s something about the way I’m funny that
is not for that venue. People [would] never know the extent of how funny I was.
I’d be Urkel. I’d be rich, but I’d be Urkel.”27
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Ironically, the same year that Chappelle walked away from the Fox deal
because of its desire to “universalize,” his autobiographical sitcom, Half Baked,
which provided a multicultural stoner world, was released and received limited
but definitely de facto crossover success. While clearly the issue of artistic freedom was at stake, Fox’s prescriptive required Chappelle to falsify the cultural
milieu he was trying to present. Unwilling to play the “tokenism” game with
Fox (and making the details of his dispute with the new number-four network
public), Chappelle spent the next half decade honing his comedy on the road
and in a wide variety of film comedies, waiting for the aesthetic and industrial
opportunity in which his kind of comedy could flourish. Chappelle and
Brennan had a vision for a series but no clear venue: “The idea was that I
wanted to do a variety show that was very personal, almost as if you know . . .
you could bring somebody’s joke-book to life.”28 The generic switch—from
sitcom to sketch comedy—was pivotal in terms of allowing Chappelle to pull
together the myriad aspects of his comic experience into a televisual text.With
the choice of genre in place, a venue was needed—enter Comedy Central.As an
article in Entertainment Weekly proclaimed, “In a universe that measures audiences in hundreds of thousands rather than the network tens of millions, [Comedy Central] has . . . provid[ed] the most nurturing environment for comedy’s
most daring minds.”29 Chappelle’s brand of comedy seemed an ideal match for
the eighteen-to-thirty-four male demographic that had been established during
South Park’s tenure at the network. The meteoric rise of Chappelle’s Show was
tied to a changing of industrial needs, as well as changing tastes and expectations for comedy in the postnetwork era; the key element in series—the blend
of the sophisticated, the sophomoric, and the subversive is Dave Chappelle’s
comic persona. By Half Baked’s release in 1998, Chappelle’s stand-up persona
and his “buddy” persona were in the melding process; by Undercover Brother’s
release in 2002, the process was (seemingly) complete.
Chappelle’s comic persona can be compared to the best reduction sauce:
yielded by slowly “boiling down” the cinematic iterations of his comic character traits—the likable, quick-witted observationalist (the “buddy”); the lackadaisically subversive outsider (the slacker/stoner/X-er); and the radical,
institutional/tradition-wary cultural critic (the “brother”)—the comic concoction is a result of a process inflected as much by the times and by the elements
themselves.The cinematic iteration of Chappelle brought him into the comedy
mainstream, while the Comedy Central series, which will be discussed in great
detail later in this chapter, made him (albeit temporarily) the basic cable’s $50million man. However, to understand the significance of this comic’s work, ideologically, culturally, and aesthetically—and the de facto crossover appeal that
makes this particular cultural production as problematic as it is promising, it is
necessary to understand where it all began: it had been established long before
Robin Hood: Men in Tights or Chappelle’s Show, when he was onstage rocking the
mike.
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A Nice Guy Can Say Just About Anything
You can tell a lot about a comic by the way he or she comes onto the stage
in a theater show. In Bring the Pain Chris Rock, dressed in black, walks on like
an M.C. getting ready to battle. Eddie Murphy, clad in an elaborate black and
purple leather ensemble, begins Raw posed in silhouette like a rock star. Decked
out in red-suited regalia, Richard Pryor strolls onstage in Live in the Sunset Strip
like the coolest cat in the neighborhood—and you’re lucky that you get to see
him. Chappelle’s entrance, for his first hour-long HBO special, Killin’ Them
Softly (2000), is markedly different—more like the guy who’s going to see the
show than the guy who’s doing the show. The chorus to DMX’s “Party Up in
Here” thumps through the hall as Chappelle saunters onto the stage at the
Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C., in a t-shirt and jeans.The chorus booms:
“Y’all gon’ make me lose my mind / up in HERE, up in here . . .” Chappelle
enters like the guy on the block who everybody likes, coming into a party that’s
in full swing. This air of casualness immediately fosters an intimacy with the
audience—and the crowd responds to his innate likability. Chappelle is keenly
aware of the advantages he receives as a result of his demeanor:“I get away with
a lot of stuff because it’s not mean spirited. People can tell the difference.”30
In the sixty-minute set that follows, a plethora of penis and weed jokes,
commentaries on race and police, and a seemingly apolitical take on the political landscape, all freely peppered with obscenities and the N word, does not alter
that initial impression: he remains likable. Unlike Rock, who hits the stage with
warp drive critique of many of the same subjects, Chappelle, utilizing ampedup versions of the naturalistic sound effects or broad gestures that anyone might
use in everyday exchanges, is the funny guy on the corner, telling you “some
shit” about life. Although there are jokes in Chappelle’s act that speak to serious
issues like police brutality and overt racism, as well as other social and political
maladies plaguing the urban black community, he does so in a way that is not
directly accusatory. His idiosyncratic and meandering storytelling style has an
undercurrent of wry incredulousness. In numerous interviews, Chappelle maintains that he “likes telling stories” and that whatever social commentary there is
in his comedy is not deliberate—and that times we live in quite simply offer
“fertile ground” for comedy.31 Thus, Chappelle does not come off as the archetype of “the angry young black man”—although, given the content of his later
comedic discourse, there is some anger there . . . underneath.
In Killin’Them Softly Chappelle’s opening series of jokes positions him with
his audience—as if he is sharing something that he knows they already know—
by commenting on the “new” D.C.: “D.C. has changed—it’s different now.
[Pause] There’s a lot of white people walking around. . . . I left D.C. in the
eighties when crack was going on. White people were looking at D.C. from
Virginia—with binoculars. [In white voice] It looks dangerous. Not yet.” The
prospect of a black comic using “white voice,” a process that, for Chappelle,
involves “taking all the rhythm out of my voice and speaking as monotone as
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possible,” isn’t in itself unique: doing the “white guy” has become a common
tool in the “white people be like” subgenre of black comedy. However, despite
the broadness of some of his humor, Chappelle’s politics of differentiation in discussions of racial inequality always, at least seemingly, displaces blame.The white
Virginians waiting for the D.C. to not be “too dangerous” are not vilified even
as he makes a statement about how crack ensured D.C.’s de facto segregation.
Not so surprisingly, Chappelle’s politics of differentiation are part of a
“friendly” setup—quite literally—in his stories about his white buddy, Chip. As
the white slacker/stoner everydude, Chip is constructed as Dave’s counterpart,
who exists without the burden of race. As Dave describes an evening with Chip
when both are high and under the influence in New York City, he is simply
incredulous at Chip’s ease with the cop he asks for direction—after admitting
to being “a little high” as well as the cop’s somewhat genial reply. The initial
punch line to the bit—that this story may not be “amazing to you but, ask any
of these black fellas, that shit is incredible” provides anecdotal commentary on
the differences in black and white relations to the police. Of course, the final
payoff to the story acts as mitigating factor, using the obligatory “weed” joke to
take the edge off, as it were: “a black man would never do that, it would be a
waste of weed.”
This discursive two-step or comedic misdirection play is often a part of
Chappelle’s humor and that of many comics (black and white) on the circuit
today. However, when Chappelle does it, the function it serves seems to be managing the audience’s comfort level: push them, pull back, challenge them, and
assuage their misgivings. Rather than go straight to the social commentary, like
Rock’s full-throttle ideological assault or even Bernie Mac’s simple statement of
“truisms,” the few declarative statements about social issues are simultaneously
matter of fact and a little bit detached.What else would you expect from a GenX black comic? “Black people are very afraid of the police. That’s a big part of
our culture. It doesn’t matter how rich you are, how old you are.We’re afraid of
’em. [Pause] And we have every right to be.” The strong declarative statement
that deals somewhat indirectly with notions of racial profiling—the dangers of
driving or even walking when black regardless of (or perhaps because of)
celebrity guides the audience into the realm of cultural critique.To further personalize this process, Chappelle approaches a white female audience member
about her experience of being pulled over by the cops: “They ask for your
license and registration? [Pause] I’m just guessing. That’s not what they say to
us.”The pointedness of his “commonsense” assertion of the differences between
a black man’s experience of the police is immediately undercut by a somewhat
sophomoric insertion into the bit regarding his exchanges with police: “O.K.
nigger, spread your cheeks and lift your sack.” While the crassness of the
anatomical I.D. required of him also speaks to notions of harassment (a cavity
search for a speeding ticket), it also plays into the kind of gross-out humor that
often elicits laughter and a “that’s wrong” (as in “that’s outlandish”) response
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rather than actually considering the wrongness of racial inequality underscoring
the joke. These mitigating factors make it easier for his multicultural audiences
to laugh at one part of the joke and leave the critique to the side.
As Chappelle regales the audiences with further travels with Chip, he continues to utilize comedic misdirection to discuss how law enforcement functions for blacks and whites. Chip’s ability to explain away erratic drunk driving
(Dave was in the car but he was smoking weed) by saying simply, “I’m sorry,
Officer. I didn’t know I couldn’t do that,” has Dave, who backs away from the
mike, in the throes of the kind of incredulous laughing that one might have
when telling a story at the club. His shift to the “real” is both striking and effective: feigning ignorance is no defense for a black man: “[Black guy couldn’t do
that.] They know we know the law. Every black dude in this room is a qualified
paralegal.”
Again this story says something “real.” For a black man, who grew up in
D.C., this very definitely expresses a very real condition. Fifty percent of black
male residents of D.C. have been incarcerated and, despite the cleanup that the
city has experienced since the days of Mayor Barry, the prospects for young
black men are limited, to say the least. The implication is that interfacing with
law enforcement is not a choice for black men—it is an inevitability. Furthermore, the notion that this threat to black males is nothing new is historicized
by the second payoff to the bit. Chappelle voices an old black man, wise to the
realities of black males and the justice system, who acts as both conscience and
legal counsel:“Nigger, don’t do that—that’s 5 to 10.” Chappelle adds wryly,“We
know the law and the penalties.”
The thing that takes some of the sting out of Chappelle’s social critique is
that there is never any direct blame—at least not for the people in the audience.
While Rock may talk about the problems with white people and then say,“But
you folk paid to see me, you’re O.K.,”32 thus making the exchange more about
business than pleasure, Chappelle always gives the audience a different kind of
out: he implies that he knows white people (for example, the story of his friend,
Chip, among other anecdotes) and that makes it O.K.33 Far from functioning as
a reversal of the old “some of my best friends are black” integrationist adage,
Chappelle’s observations reflect his worldview that portends not to being color
blind but rather color conscientious—aware of the state of race relations but not
necessarily determined by them. In the discussion of police brutality he points
to the fact that what was common knowledge in the black community—
multiple incidents of police brutality—was looked at warily by the white community: “Not that you didn’t believe us, you were just a little [pause] skeptical
. . . Then Newsweek printed it, you knew it was true. [Slipping into white voice]
‘Honey, they seem to be killing negroes like hotcakes.’”
In post–Rodney King, post–Amadou Diallo America, the existence of
racialized police brutality—since the tape that was seen around the world and
the shooting that had Amnesty International calling for a review of the
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NYPD—and the dangers of driving or just walking while black have become
visible issues in mainstream media outlets (like Newsweek), not just in the black
press, on Pacifica Radio, or National Public Radio.34 Chappelle purports that
there is a singular response to all police “indiscretions.” After describing an incident of unwarranted violence, he mimics the older officer explaining the
process to his partner, “No paper work, just sprinkle a little crack on him and
let’s get out of here.”This is actually fairly biting; however, by leaving the indictment of the system out of the joke, he just asserts that it is not what it should
be.35
In Killin’ Them Softly Chappelle directly addresses overt racism in some
clever but fairly nonconfrontational ways. He recounts his dinner in Mississippi,
when chicken was ordered for him because, as he says in southern white voice,
“Black people and chickens are quite fond of each other.” Chappelle’s response
to this not-so-subtle moment of racism is to be “upset, not mad” for unexpected
reasons:“All these years, I thought I like chicken because it’s delicious.Turns out
I’m genetically predisposed to liking chicken. I got no say.”While the joke could
have simply been read as another reminder of racism “down South,” Chappelle
complicates it by adding an anecdote that after this incident he felt embarrassment over people seeing him eat chicken in public. Chappelle, speaking as a
white passerby, who is definitely not southern, points in the direction of the
imaginary Chappelle eating chicken, and says,“Look at him. He loves it. Just like
it said in the encyclopedia.” This subtle commentary on the fact that racism
stereotypes don’t reside solely “down South” may be the closest that Chappelle
comes to blaming anyone in this 2000 version of his stand-up routine.
That is not to say that some of Chappelle’s comedy doesn’t meander toward
the more direct Def Jam model—particularly when the politics of differentiation is used to show “what white people be like.” Chappelle engages in gentle
ribbing about white protectiveness of their political views, recounting that, in
one particular conversation with a white friend (not Chip), the choice of candidate was not seen as polite conversation, but his sexual practices were fair
game: (in white voice) “I’m trying to tell you about fucking my wife and you
keep asking me all these personal questions.” Chappelle follows up with assertions of black behavior in regard to their political affinities:“[Black people] will
talk about beating up politicians. If I see George Bush, I’ll kick his muthafucking ass for cutting my Medicaid.”36 Another example is playing with the
“unhipness” of mainstream white folks like his lawyer, whose response to his
madeup slang used as a good-bye (“Zip it up, Zip it out”) is “Uh . . . O.K. . . .
Zippity doo dah, bye-bye.” The clever Song of South allusion aside, the joke is
basically a throwaway.
Chappelle’s best social critique seems almost incidental. In his hijacking
routine he plays on dialects and expectations—constructing a Chinese terrorist
who inexplicably has a Middle Eastern accent and the unlikelihood of seeing a
black hostage reading the terrorist’s statement on the news (“They is treating us
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good.We is just chillin’ and shit . . .”).The focus of the bit is on a media-rooted
misconception. On scanning the plane for black folks, he catches the eye of the
only other black passenger on the international flight, “a fella from Nigeria,”
who was looking directly at him—the two exchange thumbs-ups. Chappelle
explains that this exchange is woefully misread by white passengers: (slipping
into white voice) “Oh my God, I think those black guys are going to save us.”
Chappelle’s incredulous shake of the head to the audience conveys that the reality of the situation was quite different: the “thumbs-up” signified the recognition of the fact that they (the black passengers) were going to be okay because
as he states simply,“Black people are bad bargaining chips.”The joke series plays
out in some interesting ways. After juxtaposing the white passengers’ anticipation of a rescue moment similar to that pulled off by Wesley Snipes in Passenger
57 (when the black body is utilized to ensure white safety) and the status (read
value) of blacks to America, in broad institutional terms, Chappelle asserts that
“[for once] racism [is] working in black people’s favor.”37 In this instance he
puts forth a complex comic sequence that can be read as rather sophisticated
racial commentary.
Even Chappelle’s description of his “accidental” trip to the ghetto, which is
simultaneously absurd and startling, plays with this kind of commentary. It
begins with his discovery of the location of his chauffeur’s impromptu stop
when he notices a distinct change in the urban landscape (“gun store, gun store,
liquor store”) and ends with his admonishment of a “hardcore” baby (yes,
infant) for standing on the corner at 3 a.m., selling weed, to which the baby
dealer replies, “Fuck you, I got kids to feed, nigger.” The “accidental” journey
doesn’t directly critique the sociopolitical circumstances that make this particular urban landscape a comment on the lack of other businesses in the ghetto or
tease out the reasons that really young kids are in the drug game. One might,
however, read the baby’s reply to Chappelle’s admonishment—from his seat in the
limo—as a commentary on comfortably liberal antidrug rhetoric. Chappelle
would probably say that he just thought it was funny.
Chappelle, for the most part, avoids direct political commentary. In Killin’
Them Softly, which was taped after the contested 2000 presidential election,
Chappelle begins his discussion of politicians with a caveat:“When I go to vote,
which I don’t . . .” One might hypothesize that the source of his espoused apathy about the political process could have been rooted in either the disenfranchisement of blacks who did vote in Florida or in the belief that, in 2000, the
two-party system had not generated distinct choices for the voter.Whatever the
case may be, a definitive statement, one way or the other, cannot be easily discerned. Chappelle later states that he doesn’t know anything about their policies, but he would choose politicians on “character.” This might allude to the
focus of the 2000 presidential campaign on the moral timbre of the candidates,
as much as their espoused policies, but it is hardly incisive critique. Notably,
Gore goes unmentioned as Chappelle states that he would vote for Clinton
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again and produces sympathetic references to the Clinton White House that
rationalize away the core of the scandal and the impeachment by saying that
“busy men fuck those close to them.”38 His characterization of Bush—as the
crazy uncle who, “when shit goes down, says ‘let’s go kick their asses’”—seems
to be painted with broad, indifferent strokes. The harshest criticism offered is
encased in an absurdist vignette when Chappelle strongly asserts, “All I know
about George Bush Jr. is that he sniffed cocaine—that might be fine for a mayor
[referring to Marion Barry] but not in the White House.” With Chappelle
voicing a cokehead president in need of a fix, who sounds more like the stereotypical junkie from a seventies drug film than a head of state, the scenario he
paints is of the president exhibiting cokehead behaviors while engaging in foreign policy (he offers a blow job in exchange for a signature on a treaty). This
elicits hoots from the crowd—and from Chappelle too, who backs away from
the mike laughing uproariously. Despite the fact that the joke “kills”—and foreshadows the kind of absurdist moments so commonly seen on Chappelle’s
Show—it doesn’t resonate, in sociopolitical terms, beyond the laughter.
That is not to say that Chappelle’s comic choices are not at times curiously
inconsistent. Chappelle’s sexual politics, like those of many contemporary
comics, black and white, can be both regressive and sophomoric. Interestingly,
the gender humor feels almost like material from an entirely different set—an
add-on, if you will.The meandering storytelling becomes joke-telling.When he
chastises the women in the audience for not feeling sympathy for Monica
Lewinsky (“no one wants to be the most famous cocksucker in the world”), he
says, “That’s just jealousy,” implying that Lewinsky’s position was enviable. Furthermore, from his assertion that every woman in the audience had “at least one
dick they regret,” to his statement that “if pussy was a stock, it would have plummeted [because] you give it away too easy” appears oddly old-fashioned and
judgmental, qualities that are virtually absent in every other area of his standup.Any possibility of a libratory space in his gender humor is lost entirely when
he theorizes that had it been an older woman, rather than Lewinsky, who had
been involved with Clinton, she would have used her “services” to secure policy
and “sucked us into utopia”—in other words, when lacking in “virtue,” whoring for the greater good is admirable.
As Chappelle further rebukes women for their complaints about men—
“Yes. Chivalry is dead and women killed it”—it seems worse than reductive; it
seems unoriginal.Women, in general, don’t occupy a significant space in Chappelle’s comedy except as occasional foils and punch lines. Interestingly, with all
the talk of sex and penises sprinkled throughout the sixty-minute set, Chappelle
articulated a different kind of male world—less boys club and more “lost boys,”
in a slacker Neverland where, despite their occasional usefulness, women (and
their “issues”) had no real place.While I would necessarily categorize it as sexism by omission—and there is certainly material out there that is far more
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misogynistic—in this comic world that seems extremely tolerant and “laid
back” on every other front, the gender material seems, as previously stated,
curious.
Killin’ Them Softly is an appropriate title for this, Chappelle’s first major
stand-up special. Dave Chappelle’s stand-up, for all of its outlandish moments,
was fairly subtle—at least in terms of its social commentary. Sliding in and out
of “white voice”—and between twin poles just south of gross-out humor and
just north of scathing social critique, Chappelle’s first stand-up special did “kill,”
to use the comic’s terminology, but it did so with the soft touch that allowed
for multiple audiences from multiple experiences to actively engage in his
comic worldview. Interestingly, both of Chappelle’s stand-up specials appear to
have derived their names from popular songs from over thirty years ago—one,
a play on African American popular songstress Roberta Flack’s aching ballad of
displaced identification (which was, in a stylistically contemporized version,
recorded by Lauren Hill and The Fugees), “Killing Me Softly” (1973), and the
other from sixties “stars-of-the-future”-studded white rock band Buffalo
Springfield, “For What It’s Worth” (1967).
In ways, the two songs can be seen as emblematic of two very different eras:
the former a song-about-a-song that resonates too deeply with an audience
member (and results in a recognition about various aspects of her life) comes
from the early seventies—when the promises of the civil rights era were being
replaced by inflation, de facto resegregation (failures of busing), and a sense that
a golden moment had been lost; the latter a quintessential (and woefully overused) anthem of emerging political awareness, also about recognition, and the
acknowledgment that the times they needed to be changing both politically and
socially—and that individual action was required. While the connection
between these songs and the actual stand-up routines may seem tenuous, the
variations on theme of recognition supply the essential differences between the
2000 and 2004 versions of Chappelle’s stand-up comic persona. Industrial shifts
aside, Chappelle’s tone in the 2000 stand-up is informed by a certain casualness
that might even be seen as indifferent; cynical but not quite sarcastic, the anecdotal strategies of the set make it possible for the audience to take—or leave—
that embedded social critique. It might resonate for some, but for others it’s just
about the funny.
By the summer of 2004 Chappelle’s cachet, both in pop cultural and industrial concerns, had increased significantly. As previously mentioned, Comedy
Central’s $50-million man (or his comedic shtick) was everywhere—in person
on late-night television, from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to The Daily Show
with Jon Stewart, and by proxy in the multitudes of “Whuuuuuts” and “I’m Rick
James, bitches” that could be heard around the water cooler, in the club, and in
the frat house.The only question that remained was how popular his Showtime
(not HBO) stand-up special would be. However, the articulation of the comic’s
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persona in For What It’s Worth revealed that, since the emergence of Chappelle’s
Show, the soft-street sensibility associated with both his big-screen personae and
his earlier stand-up had gotten harder.
Like Chris Rock’s breakthrough comedy special Bring the Pain, For What It’s
Worth supplies a de facto lesson in comedy history before the comic comes to
the stage. In voiceover Chappelle explains the choice of The Filmore in San
Francisco, which he calls, “the most historic venue you’ve got as far as comedians are concerned.” As Chappelle asserts, “All the best came through the bay,”
photos of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, George Carlin, and
Paul Mooney are shown in quick succession as the jazz-infused theme from
Minnesota acts as the soundtrack.39 His final statement declares, “You don’t
have to be the biggest star—as long as you come with it and people [are] coming out.” Of course, Chappelle is the biggest comic star at this post–civil rights
moment; the semi-self-effacing comic persona of Killin’ Them Softly (and the
aforementioned opening passage) is replaced by the 2004 iteration.
From the opening bit, For What It’s Worth demands the attention of the
audience. More declarative, strongly worded, and extremely direct, the implied
“You’d better recognize” seems a departure for Chappelle—as much a sign of the
times as a sign of his changing industrial and cultural cachet.The young comic,
who had sauntered in special number one, comes onstage with a decided sense
of sly bravura: he stealthily creeps onstage, he stops and smiles slyly, with hands
raised—clasped like a champion after a fight—he walks downstage and struts
around the perimeter of the stage . . . giving high fives to the folks in the front
row as he says, “Let me hear it.” Chappelle is not just going to the party this
time—he’s well aware of the fact that he is the party. He exclaims, “I did it big
this year. From cable, Nigger! Goddam ,” signaling that he understands his
unlikely position of power. Clad in goldenrod Zaire t-shirt (depicting Ali’s
punch that took Foreman out in the “Rumble in the Jungle”), jeans, and a hipster suit jacket, Chappelle seems uncharacteristically pumped up for the set in
San Francisco.The difference in his demeanor in For What It’s Worth signals that
the tone of this set is going to be different—less everydude on the corner and
more “the greatest,” Muhammed Ali.
Arguably his first bits hardly seem revolutionary—including San Francisco
being the “gayest place on earth” and borderline heterosexist jokes about Castro
as “America’s anus.” However, as he chronicles his trek to the misnamed Tenderloin district (“there was nothing tender about the motherfucker, it was rough”),
Chappelle eases into critique of the Bay Area: “I’d never seen crack smoked so
casually.” Chappelle’s commentary is still encased in casual storytelling, but it is
decidedly less meandering.
While one might argue the bit signifies that even in the often idyllically
constructed San Francisco, the problems of the urban landscape—like crack and
the social maladies associated with it—are still present, even if they might appear
more genteel, the casual crack comment lays the groundwork for his usual
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comic misdirection that plays out over the course of the next few jokes.
Chappelle espouses admiration for “San Fran” as a bastion of tolerance, but
the comic’s platitudes for the hometown crowd are short-lived. The selfcongratulatory cheers are replaced with nervous (and, perhaps, even embarrassed) laughter as his take on the comparative politics of the region becomes
clearer: “. . . I realized how you did it—put all the niggers on the other side of
that bridge—it’s not so happy on that side . . . [when you leave] people are like
[in the surfer version of white voice] ‘Bye. Bye. Thank you for coming to San
Francisco’ . . . soon as you get to the other side, ‘Welcome to Oakland, bitch.’”
With the click, click to signify the locking of the car doors, one cannot be certain whether Chappelle is speaking of his own impulses on exiting Bay Bridge
or those of his audience—although his look at the audience seems to say, “You
know that’s what you do.”While not directly confrontational, it is not comfortably ambiguous either.
Chappelle seems less concerned with the audience’s comfort. Four days
before the premiere of the Showtime special, he remarked on the differences
between his experiences of stand-up before and after his newfound stardom:
“When you’re starting off in stand-up, it’s like you’re pit fighting—you’ve always
got to win the crowd. And now that I’m the ‘funniest man in America,’ people
will laugh at anything I say [titters from the crowd] even when I try to open up
and say something sensitive. [The crowd laughs again.]”40 Instead of playing to
his audience in For What It’s Worth, on some level Chappelle seems to be playing with them. More than a mere semantic distinction, the comic’s friendly relation is progressively complicated by overtly cajoling, encouraging, and in some
instances demanding that the audience own up to its own complicity in the
sociopolitical absurdities of post–civil rights era American consciousness.
With the comedic raison d’être of challenging any uninterrogated assumptions, Chappelle’s musings were replaced by pronouncements in a harder-edged
mode of address. Although his use of “white voice” is not new in the post–Def
Jam era of comedic differentiation, the ways in which he mobilizes his multiple
forms of whiteness in his characterizations in For What It’s Worth and, most definitely, in Chappelle’s Show call into question how those of us in the audience
constitute racial identity. The process of making meaning from these comedic
texts is further complicated by the fact that these performances of whiteness are
often juxtaposed with performances of varying types of blackness, thus urging
one to look at and beyond stereotypical constructions to ask what it means to
perform race.
One could never characterize Chappelle’s humor as conciliatory, but this
material verges on the confrontational. From his de facto anthropological study
on food and culture to the “liberation” of Iraq and antiwar activities, Chappelle’s
stories take circuitous yet purposeful paths that veer from being nonsensical to
crass to commonsensical to pointed and even radical. His food and culture
material exemplifies this kind of comic movement between nonsensical and
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commonsensical. By asserting that cultural stereotypes based on blacks and
Latinos are rooted in the fact that whites guard their dietary preferences, he
seems to be channeling Conspiracy Brother, “I study white people—you don’t
know that? I’m writing a paper on you . . . not even for school, nigger, just to
do it.” Confronting stereotypical assumptions, he capitalizes on class- and racecoded dietary assumptions. Chappelle states that he learned of “juice,” the
coveted elixir consumed by white folks, during his study as he compares it to
“drink,” the sugary, colored, and vaguely fruit-flavored substance with no nutritional value consumed by black folks. Chappelle even ends the routine by
invoking the Sunny Delight commercial in which a small multicultural cadre of
boys comes to rummage through the fridge, with all others opting for Sunny D
and the black kid seemingly eyeing “the purple stuff.” Thus, the “drink”
becomes a signifier for a literal notion of “taste” culture and dietary choices that
are informed as much (if not more) by fiscal realities than culinary preferences.
This is an example of archetypal Chappelle storytelling. After Chappelle’s
Show his mode of address to the audience is very direct, complete with “mock”
confrontation, and the implication that “I am surveying your culture” forces the
recognition of whiteness and the disparities in relationship to their cultural
counterparts, in this case, black people. Some might argue that the politics of
juice might seem a bit benign, but I think there is more than a tangential
“ketchup” connection in this story, if only on a subtextual level.41
At times the same sort of comic storytelling trajectory takes an even more
direct and unexpected path, as in Chappelle’s discussion of the “liberation of
Iraq” and the elimination of what he called the “subtle psychological nuance of
oppression” that took place when Saddam Hussein’s image was erased from
Iraqi currency in what appeared to be a rare “sincere” moment for the comic.
However, almost immediately after, Chappelle, no longer choked up about this
act of goodwill, queries the lack of the same actions domestically: “But, if you
could do that for Iraq, what about our money? Our money looks like baseball
cards with slave-owners on ’em.” His subsequent disparagement of George
Washington (and a bit of historical miseducation) calls into question myriad
icons of American culture, which, historically speaking, have different meanings
for African Americans—particularly when the father of our country actually
could have been the owner of our forefathers.
Perhaps what makes the embedded moments of the strong social commentary even more effective is that they are intermingled with the comedic version
of comfort food for the Chappelle fan base—namely “weed humor.” As with
much of Chappelle’s humor, the route to the comedic payoff, even in “weed
humor” takes time and is of course not solely weed humor. In his bit about
Native Americans that begins in Wal-Mart in New Mexico and ends with buying weed with which to smoke the peace pipe and getting more than half-baked
with Navajo tribesmen because “we have to celebrate, ‘Nigger, I thought you
were dead,” Chappelle models how cultural insensitivity is not solely the
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province of white America: his remarks about Native American culture are
products of an elementary school social studies class, “You’re hunter-gathers.”
When he asserts that he has stopped smoking weed with black people, his racebased choices about whom he will get high with is based on the fact that black
people talk about their hard times while white folks only talk about their other
“high” times. However, implicit in this assertion, albeit tangentially, is a commentary on the need for this form of escapism for some segments of the African
American community. Clearly not a “Just Say No” moment, Chappelle’s story
considers, for a split second, why young black males are not saying “No.”
The spine for many of Chappelle’s stories in For What It’s Worth is the cult
of personality, the interrogation of which serves multiple ideological functions.
In his account of his family’s ill-fated trip to Disney World his fellow travelers
in the Magic Kingdom were unable to distinguish between Chappelle the
celebrity and Chappelle the family man: “And . . . fucking everybody, [sliding
into a surfer infused version of white voice—the ‘dude’ is implied] ‘Hey! Hey!
Rick James, bitch! Rick James, bitch!’ [sliding back into his own voice, tinged
with touches of annoyance and resignation] ‘Hey, man. [Do you] mind not calling me a bitch in front of my kids?’ Even Mickey Mouse did it.”
His description of his subsequent burst of anger, which culminates in an
uppercut that knocks Mickey’s head off, is undoubtedly Chappelle’s way of
commenting on the problems with rabid (and often inebriated) fans, who chant
the “Rick James” catchphrase ad nauseam.The hypothesis that Chappelle did to
Mickey what he would have liked to do to some overly enthusiastic fans does
not seem outside the realm of possibility. This story also serves to reposition
Chappelle as the everyguy who happens to be a celebrity, thus reestablishing his
“likability” in the face of challenging material.
In service of debunking the cult of celebrity, Chappelle actually works to
convince the audience of his incredulousness at the attention paid to and the
price in scrutiny paid by celebrities. Interestingly, in this material he employs a
somewhat self-denigrating strategy, as in his references to his aborted impulses
for antiwar activism: “If they’d do that to three white women [The Dixie
Chicks]—they would tear my black ass up.” Later he admits that he is not above
reproach in terms of cashing in on his own celebrity; having been spokesman
for both Coke and Pepsi, he declares “All I know is Pepsi paid me most recently
so—tastes better.” By admitting his fallibility, Chappelle maneuvers the audience
into reacting to his candor rather than the admission of taking the easier softer
path on both political and commercial fronts.
Noting that things do not bode well for the black celebrity at this historical
moment, the comic points to a number of African American stars in very
public legal struggles in post–O. J. America42—from Los Angeles Laker star
Kobe Bryant (whose performance intensity, according to Chappelle, reads as
though the judge had told him to “play for [his] freedom” in the NBA finals)
to Michael Jackson’s recurrent dipping into some racially coded conspiracy
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theory, Chappelle notes the strange coincidence between disruptions in the
political status quo and recurring allegations against Michael Jackson. His
equivocal sympathy for Jackson also serves as a cautionary tale about celebrity:
“One day people love you more than they’ve loved anything in the world and
the next day, you’re in front of a courthouse dancing on top of a car.”
By beginning this series of stories with,“I don’t know why people listen to
me,” and thus appearing to speak with what seems like “utter candor,”
Chappelle disarms his audience by adding a quasi-confessional element to the
set. Additionally, by using his own experiences in juxtaposition to other highprofile celebrities, Chappelle teases out the absurdities of worshipping celebrities while also using it as a set piece from which to discuss other issues as well.
For example, Bill Cosby’s statements about many of the problems facing the
“lower-class” segment of the African American community caused a significant
furor in the spring and summer of 2004. Chappelle’s matter-of-fact defense of
the comic icon’s right to speak was resonant, as was his rationale for the “hard”
nature of Cosby’s critique: “Bill Cosby has some real shit to say and the whole
world freaked out. . . . Just because he’s been selling pudding pops for the last
twenty years, people forget that he’s a nigger from Philly and the projects and
he might say some real shit from time to time.” The Cosby controversy resonated across multiple registers of the African American community from symposiums on university campuses to the airwaves (MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, The
Tavis Smiley Show). One might be surprised by Chappelle’s rather outspoken
defense of Cosby; after all, Chappelle is aligned with the hip-hop culture, whose
progress, at least indirectly, Cosby bemoans. Nonetheless, Chappelle’s choice to
defend Cosby’s freedom of speech as an individual rather than as the voice of
the community also inserts a reminder of the elder comic’s experiential ties to
the urban black community.
While one must note that Chappelle doesn’t actively defend the content of
Cosby’s remarks, by referencing it as “some real shit,” some modicum of agreement might be inferred. The bit is completely consistent with the ethos of
Chappelle’s comedic social discourse, in which multiple (and sometimes conflicting) ideologies and cultural experiences are articulated—as is the pointed
comic misdirection that follows. In what seems to be even further implicit
agreement, Chappelle describes the advice he had given to students at his old
high school in Washington, D.C., about ceasing to place blame on whites for all
black social ills: “and you’ve got to learn [pause] to rap, or play basketball or
something, Nigger. . . .You are trapped. Either do that or sell crack. . . . That’s
the only way I’ve seen it work. Get to work entertaining these white people.
[Chappelle ends the bit by doing a little dance.]”
The pleasure of this misdirection is twofold: the unanticipated shift from
what appears to be positivist rhetoric of self-determination to a blatant assertion of the untenable position for black kids in the ghetto is a tried-and-true
Chappelle comic device, and the content of the statement speaks to the fact that
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the civil rights era rhetoric (as annunciated by Cosby), on some level, does not
and cannot necessarily apply in the lived experiences of black urban youth
today. Imbued with a certain degree of fatalism, Chappelle’s comment speaks to
the notion that the same old problems facing black American youth (poverty,
unemployment, substandard education) have been complicated by the current
sociopolitical climate. Even so, the comment does not reject the possibility that
there might be another way, but neither does it give any indication of what that
way might be. The little dance also places a curious punctuation mark on the
sequence—it signifies mock complicity and thus positions the comic, whose
work is filled with libratory impulses, as one who is also cognizant of and
trapped by certain realities of being black in contemporary America.
The utilization of comic misdirection within the context of casual storytelling to make an incisive sociopolitical point is the most useful weapon in
Chappelle’s discursive arsenal. If one believes that his most telling commentaries
come at the moments when the incisive masquerades as the outrageous and relatively benign, Chappelle’s routine that begins with the discussion of R. Kelly’s
alleged penchant for water sports, and the legal troubles that followed, is the
Trojan Horse of For What It’s Worth.43 After briefly engaging in a discussion of
Kelly’s actions, which were caught on tape, Chappelle makes a startling pronouncement: the issue that people should be discussing is not whether or not
Kelly actually “peed” on the girl. “The real issue is how old is fifteen—that
America really needs to decide once and for all.”
In one of the longest stories in the sixty-minute stand-up, Chappelle challenges the audience’s reactions with multiple instances of comic misdirection,
which at each juncture forces more social (and personal) introspection. Chappelle winds through a discussion of his experiences of being fifteen—when he
had already begun doing stand-up, smoking a little weed, and watching his
friends deal crack—and suggests that “getting pissed on” would not have been
what posed the greatest threat to him. By inserting his own experience as a
black teenager in urban America, Chappelle foreshadows issues of differentiation that will come into play later in the story. He calls into question why fifteen is seen as such a universally accepted age of innocence in his discussion of
the public’s concern over the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, who was held for
six months eight miles away from her home. Contrasting the prolonged media
frenzy over Smart’s kidnapping with the virtual silence over the kidnapping of
a little black girl, Chappelle recounts, “During this half a year that [Elizabeth
Smart] was missing, there is this seven-year-old black girl who gets kidnapped
in Philadelphia. Nobody knows her name [Erica Pratt] . . . talked about it on
the news two or three times, she shoulda been the top story because she chewed
through the ropes and had both of them motherfuckers in jail in forty-five
minutes. [Moderate applause from the audience.] I’m not making this up.”
In moving from Kelly (and the African American fifteen-year-old) to Smart
to Pratt, Chappelle shifts the conversation from sexual fetish to media and
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societal culpability over whose innocence, safety, and story is valued. However,
the critique is not complete. Responding to the audible cooling of the audience, Chappelle addresses the discrepancies between the views of a child of
fifteen by telling the story of another fifteen-year-old black male in Florida,
Lionel Tate, who accidentally killed his neighbor doing the wrestling moves that
he’d seen on television. “Now was he a kid? No. They gave him life—they
always try our fifteen-year-olds as adults [silence from the audience]. . . . If you
think it’s okay to give him life in jail, then it should be legal to pee on ’em, that’s
all I’m saying.”
The discursive movement that uses the banal to somewhat titillating Kelly
sex scandal as its beginning and end exemplifies Chappelle’s process of stretching his comedic boundaries. At multiple points during this sequence he pushes
the audience toward discomfort—and interrogation—thus risking both a
degree of his “likability” and the friendly relations he enjoys with his multicultural audience. Far from opaque, these clear statements about inequity give a
glimpse of the implicit pedagogy that I would argue informs the politics of differentiation in Chappelle’s comic persona. By forcing audiences to interrogate
the interconnectedness of a multiplicity of factors from daily life, from media,
from our own long-held societal assumptions—about race, class, and ethnicity—
Chappelle provokes the audience and puts our own notions of community,
identity, and, of course, race, on the discursive table.
The tools employed by Chappelle to communicate his comedic social discourse—mobilizing anecdotal observations, literal shifts in voice and perspective, mining popular culture and media, comic misdirection—have been
utilized by myriad comics from Pryor to Rock, and their comedic social discourse is shaped by the times and the medium in aesthetic ideological and
industrial terms. Often one mediated persona seems in conflict—how else can
you explain Pryor’s appearances in The Toy and Live in the Sunset Strip in the
same year.While Rock’s rant-filled shtick informed his HBO series, none of his
film roles have been able to capture the incisive and insightful nature of his
stand-up—despite the fact that he had writing credits on both Down to Earth
and Head of State.As we’ve seen throughout this study, something often gets lost
in the translation of the stand-up comic’s persona. Sometimes it is obvious—
the network requirement to clean up language (prime-time Whoopi is not
exactly HBO Whoopi) or the shift from one genre to another (Murphy in
Beverly Hills Cop vs. Murphy in Dr. Doolittle, Mulan, Shrek). Sometimes it is
more subtle—the tweaking of Wanda Sykes’s persona from Wanda at Large to
Curb Your Enthusiasm (all the personality, less critical bite). For Chappelle, his
comic persona has been refined in this cross-medium trek—and not in the traditional sense. A condensation of his former selves, Chappelle’s comic persona
in For What It’s Worth, less laid-back and more cynical than it was in Killin’Them
Softly, exists to revel in spinning yarns full of social truths that audiences may
not want to hear.This was a task with which, at least seemingly, Chappelle had
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become progressively more comfortable. After all, he had been doing it weekly
on Comedy Central since 2003.
Danc i ng Like Nobody’s Watching:
Chappelle’s Show , De Facto Cro ssove r,
and the Po stnetwork Era
In the winter of 2005 the last session of my television history course was
dedicated to Chappelle’s Show. I had chosen this particular text not because of the
low-level spectatorial frenzy surrounding the series—and it was difficult to move
around campus without hearing someone quote the series, and not even because
of the complex intertextuality of many of the sketches. The lecture—and my
motivation—could be summarized in one sentence: I know what I’m laughing
at, but I don’t know what you’re laughing at.The sketch screened in class was an
indirect parody of Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day, with Chappelle in the position
of Ethan Hawke, and Wayne Brady, former talk-show host, daytime Emmy winner, and one of the Anglo-friendliest black men on the planet, in Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning role. In what was a fairly diverse class by University of
Michigan standards, one quarter of the students were people of color, a majority
of whom had seen Chappelle’s Show and many of whom had seen this particular
sketch when it had premiered a few weeks earlier.While I was prepared for differing reading positions, I had not quite anticipated how what was read and what
was not read would inform the discussion that followed. As I listened to their
responses, which displayed varying levels of sociopolitical and pop cultural acuity, an ongoing internal monologue provided a sort of interrogatory Greek chorus regarding the comedic discourse that was not being addressed:
If you didn’t know it was a parody of Training Day, how were you reading
the conflation of Brady and Denzel Washington, the most popular black
actor on the planet?
If you didn’t see it as a parody, why was a pimped out Wayne Brady so
funny? Why did the line, “Is Wayne Brady going to have to choke a bitch”
get the biggest laugh?
What about Chappelle in the Ethan Hawke role—trading one Gen-X
slacker archetype for another one . . . of color?
Do you get the need for black actor solidarity comments between Chappelle and Brady—when, in the arena of film comedy, historically, there
could be only one?
When peeling back the layers of this sketch, one discerns a multifaceted critique on the place of black actors in Hollywood that encompasses everything
from the intersections between cinematic tropes of black male sexuality and
criminality to the query so eloquently stated by Jadakiss in his hip-hop hit
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“Why did Denzel have to be crooked, when he took it.”Then again, some saw
a funny sketch with quintessential nice guy Wayne Brady playing against type—
really against type. All of this in a five-minute sketch. I knew that there was
something going on here—aesthetically, sociohistorically, and ideologically—
and it needed to be unpacked.
Chappelle’s Show was, arguably, one of the funniest and most incendiary
series on American television in the early 2000s.The series’ contentiousness, as
well as its conflicting ideological and comedic impulses, position Chappelle’s
Show as the product of our sociohistorical moment, in the first decade of the
new millennium, when duality seems the norm. Since 2003, the lines between
taste cultures seem to blur easily, with the former fringe—hip-hop culture—
soundly ensconced at the center. When the montage for the Boston Red Sox
ALCS victory flashes on the screen and plays to the soundtrack of Public
Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome” (the “Refuse to Lose” passage) or
Outkast’s “Hey,Ya” is used as theme music at the Emmys, the Grammys, and the
Oscars, few stop to acknowledge that somewhere along the line a taste culture
shift has taken place. But these are also the times when the illusion of national
insulation has been burst by the events of 9/11. We live amid multiple wars—
culture wars that divide Americans along red and blue boundaries, interpretations of constitutional and human rights and a vision for the future that seems
diametrically opposed to our fellow citizens along color-coded lines. In
these times a War on Terror has done for many of us what Vietnam did for our
parents—turn anger into activism and/or the sense of national unity into
national disarray. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on America’s
Gulf Coast forced the media, the nation, and an administration to confront
issues of race and poverty. And although this may seem a difficult point from
which to launch into an analysis of African American comedic social discourse
in general, and sketch comedy in particular, I would argue that in profoundly
ambivalent times, the forms taken by our humor—and the discourse embedded
therein—provides telling measurements of the American psyche. For African
Americans, laughing mad has always been a strategic approach to dealing with
adversity, oppression, and ambivalence.
Since its midseason premiere in 2003, Chappelle’s Show, which the comic
describes as “hip-hop Masterpiece Theater,” engaged issues of race, class, ethnicity, and popular culture with irreverence, candor, and a decidedly black sensibility rarely seen in prime-time television comedy. As Chappelle’s Show
cocreator, Neal Brennan stated simply: “We’re trying to push the genre and
make stuff that [is] more interesting and personal. . . . We went to a place,
Comedy Central, that sort of needs us and gave us a lot of freedom. . . .We didn’t
get much money but that was the trade-off—you get control.”44 The duo that
brought us Half Baked rejuvenated sketch comedy that they describe as “cultural
rather than political”45 and infused it with a hip-hop sensibility and the
espoused creative ethos of “dancing like nobody’s watching.” However, given
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that the show averages a viewership of 3.1 million per episode on basic cable,
people are turning to it in droves.46 While the situation comedy is always about
containment—within the twenty-two-minute format, within cultural norms,
within certainties of narrative closure—sketch comedy is always about transgression, and in this particular postnetwork era, “edgy” is considered good for
business—as long as it’s not too “edgy.”
By directly engaging performances of blackness and whiteness, Chappelle’s
Show rides the razor’s edge of that category, which many, much to Chappelle’s
chagrin, find surprising, given the fact that the series, cocreator, Neal Brennan,
is white. Chappelle expresses a certain degree of exasperation about the fact that
“people think in terms of race. Because the show is so racially charged, they’re
amazed that a white person and black person can be cohorts.”47 In actuality,
with an interracial writing team at the helm, specifically engaging in issues of
race, Chappelle and Brennan model comedic social discourse where the unspoken is spoken—and the absurdities and hypocrisies that often inform
“polite” conversations about race relations are laid bare. On one hand, one
might argue that Brennan’s and Chappelle’s steadfast adherence to the notion
that theirs is a “personalized” form of comedy, thus taking the ideological edge
off of the racially charged nature of the humor, affords Chappelle’s Show a greater
degree of discursive freedom. On the other hand, the ideologically idiosyncratic
ethos might also facilitate the view that the series neither endeavors to nor
aspires to engage in more complex sociocultural critique.
By tracing the comic lineage of Chappelle’s Show from Richard Pryor’s
abortive foray into prime time in the late seventies through In Living Color’s
emergence at the birth of the netlet era in the early nineties (which coincides
with hip-hop “blowing up” and into mainstream popular culture), one can
begin to discern how and why Chappelle’s Show marks a point of rupture and a
point of convergence for myriad often conflicting articulations of blackness in
the post-soul era. One must also consider how the series’ de facto crossover
appeal problematizes its unique status as industrial and cultural phenomenon.
The notion of blackness engaged in this study is an open fluid construct, neither fixed nor finite: in fact, both racialized tropes and nuanced fragments of
multiple black identities are encompassed herein as articulated in media and in
everyday life. The intertextual pleasures of the texts (especially those rooted in
popular cultural referencing), at three very different points in the history of
American television have provided viewers with a degree of cultural cachet as
a reward for being “down”—meaning hip to the sociocultural positioning of
black language, style, music, and humor embedded in the texts.
As with any form of cultural acuity, there are multiple levels of “downness.” Insider/outsider, black/white, civil rights era/post-soul sensibilities—from
these differing reading positions, segments of the audience discern cultural
traces and treatises produced in these comedies, which, in turn, inform the
notions of blackness in contemporary American society. The Richard Pryor Show,
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In Living Color, and Chappelle’s Show tell stories of blackness for mass consumption; however, in the process of mass consuming these movable cultural feasts,
the spectatorial palates are not always sensitive enough to discern all the ideological ingredients. But, arguably, such is the nature of the subgenre of sketch
comedy, where catchphrases are often appropriated while context is lost.
Sketch comedy is only vibrant when allowed to be transgressive, when it is
permitted to prod, poke, and puncture the audience’s comfort zone and otherwise tweak the social and political status quo. However, the libratory potential
of the subgenre of sketch comedy in general and these African American comedy texts specifically, must be seen within the context and constraints of American television. While The Richard Pryor Show, In Living Color, and Chappelle’s
Show all exhibit—and realize—this transgressive potential, their pushing of aesthetic and generic boundaries takes place within, not outside of, the industrial
constraints of American commercial television. Pryor’s attempt at network
prime time, Wayans’s Fox series, and Chappelle’s Comedy Central show, when
understood in industrial, historical, and sociocultural terms, each embody conditional success and mitigated failure.
In September of 1977, The Richard Pryor Show, hailed by television critic
Tom Shales as ”the most perilously inventive comedy hour to hit prime time in
years,” began its regrettably short run.48 As Paul Mooney aptly stated, “[The
Richard Pryor Show] was way before In Living Color. I have nothing against In
Living Color, I wrote for it. . . . [It] is a spin-off from The Richard Pryor Show.We
were the first ones to land on the moon called color and provocative. We were
the first ones to land there.”49 Mooney’s assertion posits Pryor’s show at the
beginning of an African American comic lineage in relationship to In Living
Color and, by extension, to the new-millennium series; given that Mooney’s
influence on each of the three texts is considerable—as head writer, staff writer,
and comedic inspiration/recurring player, respectively—his positioning of The
Richard Pryor Show as the black sketch comedy alpha to Chappelle’s Show’s omega
has considerable authority. Nonetheless, any examination of Pryor’s show (and
the comedy special that spawned it), alongside In Living Color and Chappelle’s
Show, while logical, is complicated by the fact of Pryor’s significantly smaller
televisual oeuvre than those of his comedic progeny, as well as by the markedly
different sociohistorical and industrial context at the inceptions of each. After
all, both In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show were seen as good matches with
media outlets that, for similar reasons, were in need of challenging material to
fit into predetermined niches.
Given that these particular series must inherently be viewed as examples of
cultural production, in the process of positioning each of these televisual texts
historically one must also situate them within the context of black popular culture of their respective days. Because of the shifting industrial status of the players in each of these texts and the ability of the sketch/variety format to engage
in deliberate practices of cultural production, one can discern how the different
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choices made, in terms of depicting their constructions of the African American experience in their particular televisual milieu, correspond to and conflict
with both the aesthetic and cultural politics of their shows and their times.The
theme music of each sketch comedy series offers views of one of the ideological directives embedded in the shows:The O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money” for
The Richard Pryor Show, Heavy D and The Boyz’s “That’s the Way You’re Living
When You’re Living in Living Color” for In Living Color, and Dead Prez’s “HipHop” for Chappelle’s Show.
While only the chorus of The Ojays’ tune is used during Pryor’s series
(“Money, money, money, money. Money!”), the song was already associated with
Pryor’s televisual presence. On The Richard Pryor Special? as the theme song,
Pryor’s send-up of television evangelism featured the comic as the Rev. James L.
Williams, a money-grubbing preacher/sex symbol with a chorus of “angels” and
a personal style that was more Sly and The Family Stone than Reverend Ike.
Arguably, in a larger cultural context the song’s “bling” cautionary tale—and the
fact that the Ojays’ tune is a vestige of the Wattstax era (1973) rather than the
disco-inflected music of the late seventies—speaks to the profoundly ambivalent
black cultural moment in which The Richard Pryor Show premiered.
For both In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show the theme songs resonated
with differing segments of hip-hop culture. In Living Color’s “old-school” theme
by Heavy D provided a utopian view of the emergent hip-hop culture as the
cure for national ills in its unabashed celebration of a multicultural moment.
While the song failed to fully capture the darkly sly sensibility possessed by the
Wayans’ first television outing, it acted as a virtual counterpoint to the rhymes
of “gangsta” rappers—which did not predict a time when “prejudice was obsolete” and “safe to walk down the street.” Nevertheless, In Living Color’s role as
Hip Hop 101 for mainstream audiences cannot be ignored. As Kristal Brent
Zook notes, “[In Living Color], which has had guest appearances of rappers
Monie Love, Queen Latifah and, and Flavor Flav, is grounded in a definitive hiphop aesthetic manifested in the dress styles, graphic art, music and language.”50
The role of hip-hop culture, however, while more than cosmetic, is less than
ingrained in the series’ narratives. The engagement of hip-hop culture, like the
view of the multicultural moment, is presented simply and directly and fundamentally without any self-conscious critique.
Like “For the Love of Money,” Dead Prez’s “Bigger Than Hip-Hop” presents a cautionary directive. Chappelle’s Show utilizes an instrumental version of
a song that, like the series itself, simultaneously invokes and critiques hip-hop
culture.While Heavy D’s theme, pop-esque and positivist, celebrates the second
golden age moment, Dead Prez’s rant against how hip-hop’s cultural capital is
being spent, by whom, and on what is unlikely to be heard on TRL:
You would rather have a Lexus or justice?
A dream or some substance?
A Beamer? A necklace? Or freedom?
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Still a nigga like me don’t playa-hate, I just stay awake
This real hip-hop; and it don’t stop ’til we get the po-po off the
block.
They call it . . . hip-hop, Hip-hop. Hip-hop.
In some ways, comparing the tone of Chappelle’s Show to that of In Living Color
is roughly analogous to the comparison between the “fat lover” Heavy D and
the “revolutionary but gangsta” Dead Prez. Just as the two series intersect with
two different subcultures of hip-hop, so, too, do the series mobilize codes that
speak to the culturally savvy. In his discussion of In Living Color, one of the first
(and perhaps most critically significant) examples of netlet niche programming
in the nineties, Herman Gray teases out the series’ “strategy of representation”
and its heavy reliance of rap music and hip-hop sensibility: “Rap and hip-hop
are used deliberately but quite strategically in the program to generate identifications across racial lines.”51 While one might make the same argument for
Chappelle’s Show, I believe that the connection is more endemic than strategic:
the comic’s persona is imbued with a hip-hop sensibility—the aesthetic and the
politics of musical genre are inextricably tied to his own.While In Living Color
was informed by hip-hop, the series’ cred is solidified because hip-hop is like a
character on the show—often personified by the key figures who became either
recurring players on the series or recurring gags: during the first two seasons the
Rza and the Gza of the Wu Tang Clan, Dame Dash, Snoop Dogg, Method Man,
Mos Def, and, first as the subject of and later as player in parody, Lil’ Jon. The
mogul of “Dirty South” hip-hop originated the callbacks, which are an integral
part of the “crunk” sound; however, after Chappelle’s parody of Lil’ Jon, the imitations of those callbacks—“Whuuuuut? Whuuuuut? Whuuuuut? Oh-kaaaay!”
could be heard everywhere—from hip-hop radio stations to the front porch of
the Beta house. These hip-hop stars were integrated as players in Chappelle’s
comic troupe, which supplied an additional level of pleasure for those who
knew who was playing along here.
One of the first examples of this comes from early in the first season of
Chappelle’s Show, when what appears to be a commercial for a Wall Street investment firm veers into comic left field: as the voiceover states, “Cash rules everything around us. Cream. Get the money—dollar, dollar bill, y’all,” Smith Barney
becomes Wu-Tang Financial. The pleasures of this skit are multiple. On one
hand, the presence of two black men, the Rza and the Gza, looking more “corner” than corner office, speaking to white upper-middle-class suburbanites and
giving them “hard” advice on investment strategies, is unquestionably fodder for
humor. When the Gza says, “You need to diversify your bonds, nigger. . . . This
isn’t Trading Places, nigger, this is real fuckin’ life,” audience expectations are
clearly being toyed with, thereby playing with and against stereotypes. Those
who know hip-hop, however, also know that the Rza and the Gza are brilliant:
innovative producers and savvy businessmen, as well as part of a legendary rap
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group; for these viewers Wu Tang Financial, however unlikely, is not outside the
realm of possibility.
The enjoyment of this sketch, and, indeed, the series as a whole, is not predicated on any particular knowledge of hip-hop culture. It is here that the negotiation between insider/outsider humor is complicated in some fascinating and
arguably unique ways. In this comic text, as in Chappelle’s stand-up, there exists
another level of pleasure rooted as much—if not more—in cultural savvy rather
than solely racial affinity. This fosters a sort of de facto crossover, where the
appeal of a distinct culture product (like Chappelle’s comedic work or hip-hop,
for that matter) crosses racial and cultural boundaries due to, among other
things, shifts in taste culture or industrial reframing.
In all three of the series the engagement of stereotypes acts as the spine for
sketch material; and, to borrow Chappelle’s metaphor for series’ sketch comedy
style, in series that are like the bits in “a comic’s joke book,” some of them work,
and some of them don’t.There is a certain analytical quandary that one encounters in the process of examining sketch comedy—its inherent inconsistency—
not only in terms of quality but also in terms of its ideological and aesthetic
imperatives.The selection of any number of sketches could be used to make differing assertions about the ways in which the series’ content speaks to the articulation of blackness at its given historical moments. Thus, in the spirit of full
disclosure, when turning to the televisual texts themselves, I have selected what
I believe to be the most provocative examples of each series pushing its own selfimposed (and industrially-imposed) boundaries in relationship to stereotypes (of
class, as well as race), “insider” humor, and the performance of blackness and
whiteness. In so doing, I hope to reveal a cacophony of sometimes dissonant
articulations of African American comedic discourse that resonate across the
span of the post-soul era.
In her analysis of In Living Color Norma Miriam Schulman reminds us that
“appropriating a language of stereotypes in order to undermine the dominant
order is an age old device employed by persecuted groups to subvert the status
quo.”52 On each of the series the mobilization of stereotypes contains the
potential to confront and conform to popularly, if silently, held racial stereotypes.The “Reparations” sketch, from the first season of Chappelle’s Show, presents a litany of stereotypical constructions of blackness, mostly annunciated by
the “white” media. Correspondents from Action News present stories of what
happens when black people “get paid.” On some level the pleasures of this particular text are based in (minimally) dual recognition—the laughter impulse
rooted in the “that’s just wrong” response to constructions of African American
taste culture and another more self-reflexive commentary that speaks to playing
with “their” (read outsider) understanding of our (read insider) cultural foibles.
The line is hundreds of people long at the check-cashing liquor store because,
as the perky blonde correspondent chirps, “There are no banks in the ghetto
because banks hate black people,” is the first of many reparations-induced news
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stories explained by a white-faced Chappelle (as anchorman Chuck Taylor),
who “makes sense” of the phenomenon for the virtual and literal audience.The
finance reporter’s announcement of eight thousand new record labels being
formed in the last hour, the market implications of Cadillac Escalades and gold
going through the roof while stock in watermelon stayed “surprisingly low,” and
the newly merged world’s largest company, FuBu/KFC, leave few stereotypes
unstated. The litany of racialized tropes includes the transformation of Al
Roker-esque weatherman Big Al, from one who jovially performs amenability
to his “true” self, a “straight-up gangsta.”
Perhaps the most interesting character is the individual who is said to usurp
Bill Gates as the world’s richest man,“a Harlem native known simply as ‘Tron.’”
In matching gray PNB Nation oversized basketball jersey and shorts, Chappelle
plays Tron as a stylish street hustler with gold ropes hanging on his arms. Tron
explains to the white female reporter that his new status was acquired by virtue
of “a hot hand at a dice game, baby girl.”After facetiously stating that he is going
to put money back into the community (and then “Psych!”), Tron intones a
simple financial plan:“I’m gonna spends all the money before you white people
changes your minds.” Tron also taunts Taylor—“I got your girl, Chuck”—just
prior to asking the white female correspondent to give “a lap dance for the
world’s richest man.” When, later in the season, Tron reappears in Mad Real
26. Getting paid: Chappelle as America’s richest man and the anchor who disdained him
on Chappelle’s Show (2003). Directed by Rusty Cundieff, Andre Allen, Scott Vincent, Bill
Berner, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Peter Lauer.
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27. The other Wayans brothers, Keenen Ivory (right) and Damon, as “homeboys.” In Living
Color (1990). Directed by Terri McCoy, Paul Miller, and Keenen Ivory Wayans.
World, a racial reversal of the MTV reality series, he again acts the antagonist to
whiteness—this time to the lone white “innocent,” Chad, who is placed in the
house with a cornucopia of characters who occupy “ghetto” constructions of
urban blacks by constantly partying, never working, and,“without provocation,”
hating the white man. In this sketch Tron acts as a facilitator for the token’s
downfall when he beds Chad’s not-so-virginal girlfriend (on film)—as does
Charlie Murphy as Tyree, the prison-hardened thug who, over a “look,”
“shanks” the white guy’s father—and makes the final house meeting pronouncement that Chad has to go (because, as one of the black female housemates says, they “don’t feel safe” with him).53
In “Homeboy” sketches on In Living Color, popular mediated spaces are also
utilized as a means of putting black urban stereotypes on parade. First introduced as proprietors of the Homeboy Shopping Network, a parody of the
Home Shopping Network, Whiz (Damon Wayans) and The Iceman (Keenen
Ivory Wayans) are like Tron, visually coded as hip-hopified hustlers. Given
Whiz’s Flavor Flav–inspired timepiece hanging around his neck and The Iceman’s multiple Africa medallions, the Homeboy’s images are conflated with
notions of Afrocentrism rooted more in style than in ideology. Their mobile
place of business operates first out of the back of a moving van full of clearly
stolen goods (“televisions that are exactly like those in finer hotels” and “[gold]
chains that have been broken in transit”) and later out of the parking lot at
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Dodger Stadium during a game (the seventh-inning stretch marks the used-car
sale coming to a rapid end).The Homeboys use the language of HSN to move
their “hot” properties:“Act now and get this complimentary gift,” which might
happen to be the Gideon Bible stolen from the same room as the aforementioned television.
While these sketches primarily engage the “black-male-as-criminal” trope,
the segment for the Homeboy seminar provides a litany of Reagan/Bush era
stereotypes of blackness. The seminar, which promotes their book, How to Get
Mo’ Money without using Yo’ Money, offers a concrete plan for getting cash from
an entity “who got more money than they know what to do with—the
Gub-ment.” Beginning with the kind of “intriguing fact” that often opens
infomercial-like seminars: The Iceman states, “Did you know that food stamps
cannot be used to buy alcoholic beverages?” to which Whiz responds,“How can
I make this knowledge work for me?” Pointer in hand, they instruct the audience through a cartoon chart of a proposed food stamp scam that involves finding “an unscrupulous individual” (drawn as an older black wino) to whom you
sell a six pack of beer (which cost $3.99 “or depending upon the security
system”) for $40-$50 worth of food stamps (which he doesn’t need—“he’s eating fine . . . he might even be in your family”), which the viewer can, in turn,
sell for $25 to “a little fat lady named LaQuita with like 15 kids” (drawn as the
archetypal “welfare mom,” complete with curlers in her hair, cigarette in her
hand, and kids on her hip). “What does that equal—mo’ money, mo’ money,
mo’ money.”
As with both the “Reparations” and “Mad Real World” sketches, the overthe-top distribution of stereotypes in the short narrative of the “Homeboys”
bits—and the condensation of the racist characteristics attributed to the central
(and peripheral) players in these narratives—would seem to signal the inherent
“unreality” of the scenario being depicted. However, after screening these
sketches yet again, I am struck by the fact that the stereotypical tropes are simply
not unfamiliar and not, therefore, startling to the viewer in and of themselves
but rather by their placement alongside a series of similar constructs. It makes
me wonder—and worry—about the perceptions being formed regarding the
object of the laughter from different demographic spaces in the diverse body of
the series’ audiences.
No doubt you can see insider humor playing with outsider expectations
throughout these sketches. Sometimes it comes like a wink to the audience—
like the truck full of Kools driven by Donnell Rawlings, who models the black
people’s “love of the menthols” and supplies one of Chappelle’s Show’s all too
familiar phrases, “I’m rich, bi-atch.” At other times humor is written into the
very texture of the sketch. The ways in which insider strategies are utilized on
Pryor’s and Chappelle’s series provides counterpoints not only in terms of tone
but also of the times.Although by virtue of its brief network run, a four-episode
sample, one can sense the direction of comedic social discourse in Pryor’s series
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and the potential for engaging the often problematic process of presenting
insider humor to an audience of insiders and outsiders. Both series present constructions of a black president—one with Pryor as a fictional “40th President”
and the other a “through-the-looking-glass” construction of the current administration with Chappelle as “Black Bush.” One of the central differences
between the two portrayals is the function played by “markers” of blackness, the
most easily discernible of which is language. Pryor is playing presidential (read
formal and proper) and slides into blackness, encouraged by black presence at a
briefing, while Chappelle, as a “thugged-out” Bush whose posse supports his
“keeping it real,” gives the “straight-up” motivations for his actions.
The critique in the sketches engages both the performance of blackness and
how the perception of these performances, more often not, comes through the
lens of the media—the televised news briefing for Pryor’s chief executive and
the television news documentary for Chappelle’s Black Bush. In “The 40th
President,” while Pryor dabbles in some degree of contemporary political commentary (addressing the SALT talks and the neutron bomb, which he states is
“not in the cellular realm of reality” and, therefore, can be seen as a “neo-Pacifist
weapon”), race is the centerpiece of the sketch. Questions from black reporters
put Pryor’s Prez at ease, and he begins to answer questions as “a brother”: in
response to an inquiry about his new FBI director (from a very young Marsha
Warfield as a reporter from Jet), he responds, “I figure Huey Newton is best
qualified—he knows the ins and outs of the FBI, if anybody knows the ins and
outs of the FBI.” The significance of the reference was quite possibly lost on a
mainstream audience, who knew Newton only from either the anti-Panther
rhetoric in mainstream media or the revolutionary prowess that had inspired the
“Free Huey” campaign in the late sixties. In fact, the cofounder of the Black
Panthers had, that same year, returned from a three-year exile in Cuba to face
(and to be acquitted of) murder charges in an America that he believed had
changed enough for him to get a fair trial. Those who knew got the double
edge of the joke.
This was also the case with the black revolutionary-costumed, “Brother
Bell” (Tim Reid) from Ebony, who begins his exchange with “Yo, blood,” by
which Pryor’s president is taken aback. The recovery is quick, with Pryor
responding “Alaikum Salaam” to the reporter’s “As-Salaam-Alaikum.” The
Nation of Islam greeting and black nationalist coding from a reporter at Ebony
might be read as a surprising moment of verisimilitude for white audiences, for
black audiences (and others in the know), a politically radical correspondent for
the magazine that, in some circles, has been criticized for being “more interested
in showcasing the symbolism in black America” than “the critical substance in
black America,” seems unlikely, at best.54 This contradiction is further underscored by Brother Bell’s question: “Brother, about blacks in the labor force . . .
What are you going to do about having more black brothers as quarterbacks and
coaches?” While a legitimate question, it is decidedly less political than one
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28. Pryor’s fortieth president’s jaws are tight. The Richard Pryor Show (1977). Directed
by John Moffitt.
would expect from the way the character is presented—unless, of course, you
actually read Ebony. In Pryor’s series this subtle critique allows for the fact that
some audiences will engage (read laugh at) the “affect” of blackness rather than
its substance.
Subtle would not be a word used to describe the critique of “Black Bush.”
Chappelle introduces the sketch by immediately placing it in a “them vs. us”
context regarding both perception and policy. “If our president were black, we
would not be at war right now—not because a black person wouldn’t have done
something like that, because America wouldn’t let a black person do something
like that without asking them a million questions.” Thus, the premise of the
sketch becomes facetiously educational: making it clear to nonwhites why they
wouldn’t trust the government either if it was being run by “Black Bush.” The
broadness of the sketch (including Mos Def as a gangsta George Tenet, who
assures the press that his napkin full of actual “yellow cake” proved that Saddam
Hussein did, indeed, have WMDs) did not undermine the fact that Bush’s actions
(if not his rhetoric) had more than a touch of “street” sensibility. In a segment of
the faux documentary entitled Path to War, Black Bush, momentarily, performs
“presidentially” by discussing the times as being “ripe for regime change.” This
performance quickly fades as Black Bush gets “honest,” with Donnell Rawlings
(in another prime example of a supporting character citing/questioning culturally coded expression) providing callback confirmations.
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29. Keeping it real: Dave Chappelle (center), as straight-up President Black Bush (2003).
Directed by Rusty Cundieff, Andre Allen, Scott Vincent, and Neal Brennan.
Black Bush: But, if I can be real.
Rawlings: Be real, son.
Black Bush: Can I be real?
Rawlings: Be “real” real, son.
Black Bush: He tried to kill my father, man. I can’t play that shit.
Rawlings: Say Word. He tried to kill your father.
Jumping up from his seat, Black Bush grabs the boom mike like an angry M.C.
and says (in melodramatic outrage) directly to the camera, “The nigger tried to
kill my father.”To which Rawlings as his “backup” replies,“Word to everything
we love. We’re coming to see y’alls.”
The image of Black Bush, in all its “thugly” nuance, and his Pentagon posse
getting ready to roll, replicates any number of moments in black gangstainflected films—from Menace II Society to Baby Boy—particularly if one substitutes “boy” for “father.” The pleasure added here for insiders is rooted in their
knowledge of other black cultural productions—like Black Bush naming Afrika
Bambaataa and his Universal Zulu Nation as part of the coalition of the willing. The central premise, however, that if one examines the actions of the
administration, the emotional illogic of the foreign policy seems more about
turf, pride, and “cream” than exporting freedom can be understood without
one’s being able to decipher the hip-hop currency in the text. In these sketches
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the conflation of race and culture provides at least two viewing positions from
which to understand the comedy—but that does not prevent the viewer or this
scholar from discerning the direction of the comedic discourse. That is not
always the case.
Race is clearly not the only construct coming into play in these series.The
intersections between race and class inform the positing of the street hustlers in
the urban postindustrial American milieu: arguably, while the spectator may
infer that these narratives position Tron, the Iceman, and Whiz as African
American males utilizing the employment opportunities presented to them, in
the end they are, nonetheless, the target of the laughter. Perhaps simply a sign
of the times—an era where the notion of enlightened self-interest seems to have
become progressively outdated, the sketches featuring In Living Color’s homeless
guy, Anton, and Chappelle’s Show’s crackhead, Tyrone, for all their media savvy
and self-referential prowess are fundamentally media spoofs, with their respective fringed behaviors acting as the virtual comic rim-shot. In the parody of the
PBS upscale fix-it series,Anton hosts “This Old Box,” citing the home improvement possibilities for his place of residence.The sketch dabbles in presenting the
realities of living conditions for folks on the street, but ultimately, Anton’s pride
in his ingenuity—the jerry rigging of electricity, heating, and plumbing, which
constructs him more as a homeless version of MacGyver than Bob Villa—is the
punch line.
While there is a touch of the Little Tramp in In Living Color’s portrayal of
Anton,Tyrone lacks any redeeming qualities: driven entirely by his addiction—
he is willing to do anything and to give detailed accounts of those actions.The
archetypal crackhead, whose exploits have found their way into numerous
stand-up sets (Chappelle and Chris Rock’s included) and American popular
memory (whether through “crack whores” and “crack babies” common in the
rhetoric of the Reagan-and-Bush-the-elder era on the dangers of urban America or in devastatingly accurate cinematic constructions like Samuel L. Jackson’s
Gator in Jungle Fever), Tyrone’s appearances seem to exist outside of a sociohistorical sense of the crack epidemic’s impact on urban America.The sketches
are disturbingly funny: whether as the pro-crack “antidrug” lecturer for an elementary school class or the contestant for whom the most outlandish (and disgusting) tasks on Fear Factor seem like a Sunday brunch. Chappelle plays Tyrone,
white-lipped and scratching, with jerky movements (and sometimes, old-school
dance moves), as the character intones his status, happily outside of the mainstream, in an accent that is difficult to pinpoint in terms of region. When the
host prepares the crackhead for each progressively horrifying task, Tyrone
replied confidently with some variation of “Didn’t tell you, Joe Rogan, I smoke
rock.”
The outlandishness of both Tyrone and Anton seems a stark contrast to the
two-part sketch that introduced Pryor’s underclass characters. In the instances
when the black underclass is directly engaged, the result is often transgressive
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without necessarily mustering an ideological punch.Yet one must also consider
whether the kind of bittersweet construction of comedic discourse dealing with
class disparity, homelessness, and the sociopolitical roots of underclassness illustrated in Pryor’s “Junkie and Wino” sketch could play in the contemporary
comedy climate. The same might be said for a seriocomic two-act sketch from
The Richard Pryor Special?, which chronicled a night in the life of Willie the
wino, Pryor’s construction of the barfly cultural critic, who made a striking and
poignant debut on his special—and to whom he never had gotten the opportunity to return on his own show. First shown in his bar cultural milieu, Willie
is depicted in relationship to a disaffected segment of society, which he proceeds
to critique even as he positions himself as a part of it (before the bartender gives
him his nightly escort to the door). While the barfly milieu seemed somehow
outside of time—by virtue of the “integrated” crowd (there were two nonblacks, one patron and the bartender) and the not-surprising constructions that
his fellow patron/alcoholics were out of step with society (regardless of the
era)—the home space is historically situated across the civil rights and post–civil
rights era. In the second part of the sketch we meet Willie’s wife (played by
Maya Angelou), who Willie says “is gonna kill me then she’s gonna talk me back
to life and then kill me again.” In the soliloquy from Willie’s long-suffering wife,
Angelou gives Willie something that neither Tyrone nor Anton possesses, sociocultural context.
Separated by a decade from each other (and at least two from Pryor), the
most concrete examples of In Living Color’s and Chappelle’s Show’s engagement
of this segment of the black underclass reveal a comic strategy that is decidedly
more explicit, undoubtedly darker and markedly less human. In the end, as Gray
asserts, the construction of Anton—and I would argue Tyrone as well—leaves
the black underclass “exposed . . . as television objects of middle-class amusement and fascination . . . amusing social incompetents with whom few can or
should identify and for whom most have little if any feelings.”55 I believe this
also raises questions about how comedic social discourse actually can and cannot function in contemporary society.The prescriptive implications of the Pryor
sketch, although not overt, speak to the idea that understanding Willie’s backstory—and, thus, educating the audience—can have a broader impact on
popular consciousness toward the similarly downtrodden.There is no such educational directive in the sketches featuring Anton and Tyrone, no prescriptive
about how to understand their plight—in fact those who come to either the aid
or the defense are often cast as liberal suckers.56
While the word that best describes the tone of the humor is unflinching,
when one returns to the repeated assertions about the “personal” nature of
comedy on Chappelle’s Show, there is some flinching going on.While Chappelle’s
Show clearly taps into both hip-hop flavored black thought and a generational
ethos, the comic refuses to address why and whether it might be seen as “representative” of the ideologically informed within the subcultures he engages.
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Whether this refusal might ultimately be used as a way of undermining the ideological work being done in the comedic televisual text, Chappelle’s Show (and
the popular cultural buzz it has generated) has slapped race back onto the discursive table of sketch comedy with the kind of resounding and unanticipated
thud not heard since Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase played “word association” on SNL. In this historic sketch, written by Paul Mooney for Pryor, Nigger,
the key word in the sketch, which has been used “like aural wallpaper,” to borrow Elvis Mitchell’s phrase on Chappelle’s Show and in the stand-up work of
Pryor and Chappelle, acts as the nexus for the problems and the potential for
articulating the black experience in comic social discourse. It also underscores
the fact that the use of and the response to the N word is always a commentary
on both blackness and whiteness in post–civil rights America. As Chappelle
maintained in a 60 Minutes interview, “If you could sum up the story of America in a word, [“nigger”] might be the word. It has connotations in it that society has never dealt with.”57
Both The Richard Pryor Show and In Living Color reflect on whiteness in
differing ways—but both do so indirectly, and their use or probation of the
N word is also deliberate. One might argue that the never-produced Pryor
sketch parodying the pathos on parade game show, Queen for a Day, by substituting race for royalty—and having minorities play for all the subsequent privileges that being “Whitey” affords—speaks directly to notions of white privilege
without actually revealing how whiteness is constructed. The pathos on parade
here are myriad tropes of downtrodden-ness associated with poor, disempowered, and otherwise disadvantaged people of color—as contestants vie for prizes
including “a year’s supply of believable excuses for utility bill collectors, a case
of ripple . . . and a Beverly Hills mother of three to clean your house and do
your windows.” The privilege is the subject of the comedic discourse—the
whiteness is not. Furthermore, the use of the N word is reserved for sporadic
referencing—like a “nigger I knew in Detroit.” Given the network climate in
the days long before Def Comedy Jam and the struggles with the censors that
Pryor and his writers faced, the politics of nigger were clearly a battle they were
not willing—or able—to fight.
The N word was prohibited on In Living Color—as were discussions of AIDS,
white supremacy, and crack—opting for a positivist if irreverent view of the
moment of “multiculturalism” in the early nineties. The choice of method in
engaging socioculturally packed issues was often contingent and ambivalent—in
other words, they were testing uncharted netlet waters. In the “Toms” sketches on
In Living Color, the performance of whiteness—and not the embedded privilege—is the topic. The “Toms” (Damon and Keenen Wayans) are played as the
fully assimilated Negro version of the Smothers Brothers (sans any sense of political or racial awareness) hosting their own talk show. In response to being called
“brother” by their African American guest, Tom (Damon) incredulously remarks
on the other “brother’s” confusion:“We’re brothers [signaling to the other ‘Tom’].
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You’re just an angry black guy.” In this throwback construction of “good
Negroes,” the Toms perform “whiteness”—down to the processed hair, V-neck
sweaters, and a song style and speech that fetishize the “whitest of white” cultural
practices as the norms to which they aspire.The “Toms,” by name and deed, present an overdetermined construction of black folk trying to be white, and when
presented as the antithesis of the “stay black” sentiment of that day are not challenged to move beyond these essentialized notions of performing whiteness—as
living racialized punch lines for “white people be like” jokes. In these sketches
either privilege or performance of whiteness is the subject of the comedic critique, and this narrowing of the discursive focus limits viewing the oppressive
structures of whiteness as ingrained, unspoken, and uninterrogated. In other
words, in these comedic discourses, whiteness gets off easy, and audiences get to
stay fairly comfortable.This is not completely the case on Chappelle’s Show.
In Chappelle’s Show, the strategic use of the N word, with its multiple contemporary and historical meanings, plays a prominent role. In Am I Black Enough
for You? Popular Culture from the ’Hood and Beyond,Todd Boyd contends that “what
is truly compelling about this word [nigger] and its resulting image is that many
in contemporary society, in opposition to a large percentage of African Americans, have chosen to adopt a nuanced form of the word as a vital part of their
own cultural identity.The modern-day ‘nigga’ . . . equally defies aspects of mainstream white culture, as well as the at times restrictive dimensions of status quo
black culture.”58 In some ways I believe Boyd’s assertion describes Chappelle’s
use of the word, but in other ways I believe something less successfully subversive is going on. On one hand, when asked about audience discomfort with his
frequent use of nigger, Chappelle shrugs and replies,“To each his own . . . [nigger]
used to be a word of oppression. But when I say it, it feels more like an act of
freedom . . . for me to say that unapologetically on television,” thus articulating
the libratory component of using the N word.59 On the other hand, the comic
maintains that his frequent use of the N word has no greater significance than
“that’s just the way” and that “there are people who speak that way as one of the
subcultures in America.”60 And while Chappelle admits that he would be furious if a white comic invoked the N word in his act, the subcultures for whom
usage is acceptable seem vaguely defined as those “who know in what context
to say it. They know who and when and why and where they’re saying it.”61
Regardless, his use of the word nigger is tied to some form of rebellion—if only
against those convinced of the negative power of the word, regardless of who
uses it: “I’m not concerned when black intellectuals say the ‘N’ word is awful. If
people stop saying the ‘N’ word is everything going to be equal? Is a rainbow
going to come out of the sky, and all of a sudden things are going to be better
for black people?”62 By looking at two sketches from the first and second seasons
of Chappelle’s Show, we can begin to see how the show’s articulation of blackness—in its myriad often conflicted mediated forms—forces the audience to
recognize whiteness as a cultural construct as well.
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In January of 2003 the sketch on Clayton Bigsby, the black white supremacist, appeared on the premiere episode of Chappelle’s Show, which, according to
Brennan, the network initially fought. “[Comedy Central didn’t think it was
exemplary of what the show is and that was the most vicious fight we ever had
with them because we were like,‘This is exactly what the show is.’”63 The Frontline parody was inspired by Chappelle’s grandfather’s story—in reverse. Chappelle describes his grandfather as “a proper dude” and fair skinned—“he
could’ve been white, he was born in a white hospital in Washington, D.C., in
1911 so one of his parents had to have been white.”64 Like Bigsby, his grandfather was blind from birth; unlike Bigsby (who is played by Chappelle), he was
cognizant of his race, even as he was put in the position to “pass” to avoid
trouble during school. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., his
grandfather, riding the bus in his D.C. neighborhood, became aware of a
“ruckus” caused by a white person being on the bus—“Grandpa thought the
white person was foolish until he realized that he was the white fellow in question”—his grandfather emerged from the situation safely when “he got real on
’em” and showed that he was a “soul brother.”65 This story became the source
material for what is arguably the series’ most provocative sketch—and it was on
the show’s premiere episode.
The first fifteen minutes of the show had been irreverently amusing, including a commercial parody of the annoying “club dancing” girl in the Mitsubishi
television spots, faked archival footage of a Nat King Cole’s Christmas special
(which quotes both hip-hop language and the malt liquor pouring segment of
Dr. Dre’s “It’s a G Thing” video), and an absurdist skit on having a “home
stenographer.” However, there had been nothing earth shattering about the
series’ premiere thus far. Chappelle’s introduction to the sketch definitely led
one to believe that something outrageous was to come:“I still haven’t been cancelled yet, but I’m working on it. And I think this next piece might be the one
to do it. This is probably the wildest thing I [have] ever done in my career. I
showed it to a black friend of mine and he looked at me like I had set black
people back with a comedy sketch. [Shrug.] Sorry. Just roll it.66
The filmed sketch, which appears identical to a segment in the PBS documentary series in terms of tone as well as visual conventions (identified “talking heads,” voiceovers, slow-motion passages, setting the subjects in their
respective environments), begins with a warning (white letters on a black
screen) read in voiceover by longtime television character actor Bill Bogert, as
journalist Kent Wallace:
WARNING
For viewers sensitive to issues of race, be advised that the following piece
contains gratuitous use of the “N” word. And by the “N” word, I mean
Nigger. There I said it.
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The warning, which engages white liberal discomfort with the word (“there I
said it”), is the first indication of the contentious nature of the sketch. The
camera freezes on a long shot and pulls into a close-up of Chappelle as Bigsby,
clad in large dark glasses, camouflage hat, overalls, and red-and-black flannel,
rocking on the porch of his rustic homestead (loving, also blind, white wife at
this side), as Wallace’s voiceover, dripping with incredulousness, questions,“How
could this happen? A black white supremacist.”After supplying Frontline with an
extensive list of the people he hates (“Niggers” leading the list), Bigsby ventures
off of his lands (and out of the bubble wherein his “whiteness” is secure).When
we learn that Bigsby and all of his classmates at the Wexler School for the Blind
were told that Clayton was white, the performance of “whiteness” is called into
question by the headmistress’s reply to Wallace’s inquiry (“and he never questioned it?”): “Why would he?” she stated, simply.
Furthermore, while Bigsby’s construction and his tirades clearly illustrate
the absurdities of white supremacist discourse, what I find more challenging is
the way the sketch plays with the intersection between the word nigger and the
performance of “whiteness.” The image of Bigsby (Chappelle) slapping one of
the locals on the back and joining in on the verbal hate-fest, which is in actuality being directed at the black white supremacist himself, is as startling as it is
subversive. The locals stand in stunned silence as Bigsby continues to hurl epithets, ending with a fist clenched call for “white power.”The white recognition
of performing whiteness is further complicated when Bigsby encounters a car
full of young white suburban males, constructed as co-opters of blackness
(dressed in hip-hop regalia and blasting rap), who take the call of “Boogedy,
Boogedy, Nigger” from the BWS as a sign that they are, indeed, “down.” At his
book signing, attended by Klan members, skinheads, and rednecks in full dress,
Bigsby wears KKK robes, in order to, his bodyguard, Jasper, reminds him, keep
his identity secret from those “unsympathetic to the movement” (and, thus, to
keep him “useful”). After a vitriolic tirade against everyone from any marginalized group to the liberal media, Bigsby acquiesces to the crowd’s calls to “Let us
see your face, brother” and dehoods—literally blowing his followers minds.67
While one might argue that these constructions are merely jokes—some broad,
some subtle—playing with long-held stereotypes, I think something far more
complex is going on.
In this sketch the question becomes, “Who is the Other, anyway?” The
reception of this particular performance of whiteness, although absurd, represents a certain type of “authentic” voice, that of the unbridled, white supremacist—who happens to be black. Before dismissing this notion, as an intellectual
stretch, consider how as Bigsby, Chappelle forces the viewer to see how “whiteness” is quite literally performed—not simply by his southern inflected “white
voice” but also by depicting these forms of whiteness as “learned” constructs—
whether by Bigsby, his supporters, or even the young suburban boys.Whiteness
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is not invisible here; thus, the Clayton Bigsby sketch can be seen as comic discourse that pushes the viewer to acknowledge that “everyone in this social order
has been constructed in our political imagination as ‘a racialized subject’” and
“to make visible what is invisible when viewed as the normative state of existence: the white point in space from which we tend to identify difference.”68
Rather than refracting meaning from the “white point in space,” the focus on
difference is on the white space—Clayton Bigsby may be black, but it is performing whiteness that is being interrogated.
Over the course of the nine-minute sketch, the word nigger and other racial
epithets against African Americans (including “coon,” “jungle-bunny,” and
“nigras”) are uttered twenty times—which must be some sort of record for
broadcast television. The usage of the N word in the context of this sketch, for
the most part, simultaneously confronts and conforms to the historical construction of the term, which Todd Boyd asserts “connotes a racial hierarchy that
has been in America since its inception. . . . ‘Nigger’ remains a lingering example
of the culture defined by slavery and the world that grew up in its aftermath.”69
(For the sketch’s suburban boys, nigger was conflated with nigga—a distinction
to which I will return.) The use of the N word in this particular sketch—by
forcing an interrogation of whiteness and the sociohistorical baggage in accordance with white supremacist ideologies—is positioned within a context of
libratory comedic discourse.
30. Clayton Bigsby, the black white supremacist, makes his debut on the series premiere
of Chappelle’s Show (2003). Directed by Rusty Cundieff, Andre Allen, Scott Vincent, Bill
Berner, Bobcat Goldthwait, and Peter Lauer.
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31. Not your typical fifties domcom: “The Niggar Family.” Left to right: Tim (Johnny
Pruitt), Clifton the Milkman (Chappelle), Frank (Dan Ziskie), and Emily (Margo Skinner)
on Chappelle’s Show (2003). Directed by Rusty Cundieff, Andre Allen, Scott Vincent, and
Neal Brennan.
The same could be said for the much-discussed sketch from season 2 of
Chappelle’s Show about the family with an unusual last name.70 Shot in the
grainy black and white of a fifties’ domestic comedy, a perfect suburban home,
reminiscent of The Donna Reed Show, comes into view as do cutesy script letters, that spell out the name that is being sung to a tune that could have been
on the Hit Parade in 1955: “N-I-G-G-A-R, it’s the Niggar family.” The introduction of the wholesome Niggar family, Fred, Tim, and Emily, who look like
extras from Father Knows Best, continues as they wave from their front stoop and
then as the parents run behind a teenaged Tim on his two-wheeler as the verse
sounds, “Teaching Tim how to ride a bike, these are the Niggars that we like.”
Described as “deeply cutting and even subversive” by Bob Simon on 60 Minutes, the sketch again uses the N word as a means to list every possible stereotype about “niggers” in this off-kilter context. While everyone, except the
Niggars, seems to be aware of the other context of their last name, it sits in the
center of the sketch like the elephant in the living room—spoken but unacknowledged.Whether in reference to their newborn niece’s “Niggar lips” or the
“Niggar boy” being “such a talented athlete and so well spoken,” racial stereotypes are sprinkled on top of the narrative like jimmies on a sundae.
The most interesting interactions in the sketch are between the Niggars and
their “colored” milkman, Clifton (who is introduced in just that way). Chappelle
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plays Clifton as though he was channeling Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, with
the mixture of subservience and insolence in his faux gravelly voice serving him
well as he begins his own litany of “nigger” stereotypes”—from the refusal of
“extra bacon” from Mrs. Niggar (“I know better than to get between a niggar
and his pork”) to the reminder to Mr. Niggar about the overdue balance on
their account (“I know how forgetful you Niggars are about paying your
bills”)—even as he is performing an archetypal fifties “colored” character. As
Chappelle plays almost directly to the camera (in sitcom style) with a physicality
reminiscent of toned-down fifties “cooning” (a cross between Rochester and
Stepin’ Fetchit), Clifton’s knowing glee at throwing the name/term around in
stereotypical and contemporary vernacular terms—referring to the paterfamilias as “Mr.‘N’ word”; reassuringly saying,“Niggar, please”; and finally leaving the house with “Peace, Niggar”—is juxtaposed with the critique of the
genre (and blacks’ role in it).
The conscious mobilization of the phrase in this particular sketch also
seems an answer to critique about the series’ use of the word—although Chappelle maintains that he and Brennan “just thought it was funny.” When Clifton
and his wife, waiting to be seated at a fancy restaurant, take offense to the maitre
d’s call for “Niggar, party of two,” his anger is assuaged when the “Little Niggar”
appears with his date. Clifton’s final set of lines put the final discursive cherry
on this subversive comedic sundae when he states,“I bet you get the finest table
a nigger has ever gotten at this restaurant”—as they all laugh uproariously, he
adds, “This racism is killing me inside.” The absolute lack of acknowledgment
of his words by all the others (including his wife) is striking—particularly
because he continues to laugh. Unlike the Clayton Bigsby sketch, the use of the
word itself is more central to the sketch than the performance of race—
although one might argue that Chappelle’s playing “colored” provides a dual
commentary on the historical and contemporary constructions of blackness in
the sitcom genre. I should also note that in various interviews with Chappelle
in mainstream media, the Niggar sketch is discussed with greater ease than
Clayton Bigsby—whether motivated by timeliness (many of the interviews
were done after season 2, during which the former was aired) or the genuine
discomfort/difficulty in the way nigger is repeatedly utilized in the Bigsby sketch
cannot easily be determined.
Undoubtedly, the politics of the N word have not gotten this much airplay
since the early nineties in discussions of a different type of creative text and
social context—namely, rap music and hip-hop culture.The liberatory potential
of the Chappelle’s Show’s use of the N word, however, is complicated by another
wall over which the “aural wallpaper” is placed. In the first season DVD commentary during the “Mad Real World” sketch, Brennan calls attention to Tron
calling Chad a “nigger” in one of many hostile moments.The cocreators are in
agreement that white people are called nigger as much of the time as black
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people are in the series’ multiple narratives.Yet even as this indiscriminate use
of the N word serves to lessen some of the historically based sting from the epithet, the rules of usage, unclear and situational, reflect a sense of ambivalence
and indifference about the relationship between this particular N-word policy
and presents a confusing model of racial awareness. Chappelle noted that if a
white comic used the word, he would be “furious,” but, with Brennan, in this
instance, he shares ownership of the sociohistorically loaded term. This type of
ambivalence carries over into readings of Chappelle’s Show, when folks who have
proclaimed themselves as “down” take fragments of the televisual text to places
that I don’t believe Chappelle had envisioned they would go.
C onclu si on
Through an examination of reading positions, cultural production, and the
multiple layers of the text, the significance of the work done by both Chappelle
and his show become clear even as the delineation of sociocultural imperatives
within the work become muddied. As products of the network, netlet, and
postnetwork era, respectively, The Richard Pryor Show, In Living Color, and
Chappelle’s Show navigate issues of race as best they could for their time. This
assessment does not excuse, however, the ways in which other categories of
marginalization are either elided or exploited. Nor does it explain how and
why some of the most popular characters in the comic stables of these series,
particularly the latter two, can be seen as fundamentally apolitical, bordering on
minstrelsy.
The Men on Film series on In Living Color presented Blaine (David Allen
Grier) and Antoine (Damon Wayans) as archetypal Snap Queens, whose doubleentendre filled reviews inspired as much ire as fandom in the gay community—
just as the previously discussed “Homeboys” did in their black fan base.
Furthermore, those familiar with Chappelle’s Show are undoubtedly aware that
the two most popularly cited characters in the series—and their patented catchphrases—have not been discussed thus far simply because, ironically, I would
argue they occupy the fringe of Chappelle’s comedy. Like parsley on the Chappelle’s Show discursive plate, the comic’s portrayal of a cocaine-driven frenzied
Rick James in Charlie Murphy’s Hollywood Moment, which lampooned the
salad days of the Super Freak and provided the oft quoted “I’m Rick James,
bitch,” as well as the nonsensical mimicry of the King of Crunk, Lil’ Jon, utilizing his callbacks as his primary mode of expression, while undoubtedly funny—
whether or not one knew the place these folks occupied on the continuum of
black music—add color but little substance to the televisual meal. Regardless of
their most quoted status (in spaces as varied as the control rooms of television
stations to frat parties on State Street), these sketches provide little to no sociocultural context yet award the trappings of cultural cachet. While I doubt that
knowing Chappelle’s Show would be seen as a mark of distinction by the
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standards of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of taste culture (rarefied and certainly not
televisual), I would argue that to a growing segment of our world, it is.
At a professional function that took place during the second season of
Chappelle’s Show, I met someone whose work is not connected to popular
culture in any way. When he mentioned having seen Chappelle’s Show, for a
moment it was like he was flashing cultural currency—although admittedly, he
thought Lil’ Jon was just an outlandish fictional character in the series’ troupe.
The pervasiveness of these characters in the popular imaginary, although they
play lesser roles than many more-complex figures in the series narrative, speaks
to how televisual spectators across the demographic spectrum choose to privilege different aspects of the text. So after extensive discussion, research, screening, and examination of both this complicated televisual text and Chappelle’s
evolving comic persona, my initial intellectual quandary remains fundamentally
unchanged, and while this is not necessarily a bad thing, it raises questions about
how skillfully notions of race—in this case blackness and whiteness—can be
made safe when narratives complicating those constructs are partially or superficially read.
Historian and cultural theorist George Lipsitz makes an unequivocal statement about the power and function of race in American society.“Race is a cultural construct, but one with sinister structural causes and consequences.
Conscious and deliberate actions have institutionalized group identity in the
United States . . . [including] the dissemination of cultural stories.”71 No doubt
the way in which specific cultural stories are read can either contribute to or
undermine hegemonic notions of race. One might also assert, however, that
being in a position of media power—Chappelle as Comedy Central’s $50million man—would afford a space from which subversiveness could speak.The
answer is yes and no.While ensconced at Comedy Central, on the fringes of the
Viacom empire that includes media outposts the CW, CBS, BET, Showtime, and
MTV, Chappelle’s Show’s status, along with the equally irreverent but decidedly
less political South Park, as the darlings of basic cable and the cash cows for the
network, positioned it as marketable and center, not marginal and fringed.
Given the biting and incisive nature of Chappelle’s last stand-up special (2004),
one would have predicted that season 3 of the series would continue to push
boundaries—and buttons—for multiple audiences, as well as for the cable channel. One would have been wrong.
The much-anticipated and thrice-delayed third season of Chappelle’s Show
proved to be a battleground for Chappelle as a socially and politically aware person and his audacious and fearless comic persona. One of the concerns raised
throughout this analysis of the series involved how it was being read by multiple audiences: in other words, what exactly were they laughing at? The cryogenic state of the series seems to be rooted in that concern with Chappelle
questioning whether his series was exploding stereotypes or merely reinforcing
them. As Dick Gregory stated, “When you mention his name among young
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folks, it’s like mentioning Jesus in a Christian church.”72 The veracity of the civil
rights era comic pioneer’s statement, in many ways, contributed to the show’s
undoing. The comic’s awareness of both the industrial and cultural cachet that
his series had amassed was compounded by the pressure and responsibility that
came with that coveted position.
As early as November of 2004 Gregory’s reaction to the sketches that he
had taped illustrated his comedic, intellectual, and, arguably, spiritual conflict. In
Devin Gordon’s Newsweek article he described watching Chappelle taping a
sketch entitled “The Nigger Pixie.” Chappelle, clad in the costuming of minstrelsy (blackface, white lips, gloves, red vest, and a Pullman Porter’s cap), was the
aforementioned pixie, a self-hating devil on the shoulder of prominent black
men in American popular culture (like Tiger Woods and, of course, Dave
Chappelle). The pixie exhorted them to react “naturally” and perform the
stereotypical tropes of black masculinity. When Chappelle greeted journalists
between takes, he apologized for his appearance, slyly adding, “Bet you never
met a real live coon.”73 On The Oprah Winfrey Show, Chappelle’s first televised
interview since leaving his series, the comic provided a description of the sketch
that differed from the one recounted in Newsweek: “The premise of the sketch
was that every race had this . . . pixie, this racial complex. . . .The reason I chose
blackface at the time was [because] this was going to be the visual personification of the ‘N’ word.”74 As with much of the work done on the third season,
the comic’s postperformance reaction to this sketch changed significantly once,
one might hypothesize, he began to consider how the comedic critique was or
was not being read. Chappelle would later state that it was the reception of “The
Nigger Pixie” that led to his first flight from the series and his attempted hajj
in late 2004.75 Loud and long laughter from one of the white crew members
gave the comic a moment of pause. “I know the difference of people laughing
with me and people laughing at me—and it was the first time I had ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with.” That sense of discomfort and the
desire to meet the myriad expectations of insightful, incisive, and cutting-edge
comedic discourse made the already arduous process of writing and performing
in a weekly series overwhelming to the comic: “I felt like it had gotten me in
touch with my inner ‘coon.’They stirred him up. . . .When that guy laughed, I
felt like, man, they got me.”76
Comedy Central president Doug Herzog, Neal Brennan, and the comic
himself maintained that network censorship was not an issue in the formulation
of the comic content of Chappelle’s Show: the last word on what would or would
not play was Chappelle’s. Brennan, who is no longer affiliated with either the
series or the comic, bemoaned Chappelle’s second guessing of the sketches, stating, “Dave would change his sketches so much and it got to the point that the
show never would have aired if he had his way.” In Time Brennan described a
fractious creative process where a sketch that either he or Chappelle had pitched
would be written and then taped, with the enthusiastic approval of the comic,
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only to be derailed later: “at some point, he’d start saying, ‘This sketch is racist
and I don’t want this on the air.’ . . . There was this confusing contradictory
thing: he was calling his own writing racist.”77
Despite the fact that both Brennan and Herzog have raved about the quality of the sketches that have been taped (only enough to fill four of the ten
episodes of the series without the in-studio stand-up segments), Chappelle’s
questioning of his inner circle’s assessments revealed his consternation about
both the series’ comic quality and his retention of his specific comic voice:
“Everyone around me says,‘You’re a genius! You’re great! That’s your voice!’ But
I’m not sure that they’re right.”78
Although “intense personal issues” were later cited as the reason for Chappelle’s departure, the entertainment media mill spent much of the remainder of
spring and summer cranking out speculative articles about the comic’s disappearance after failing to report to the set in late April of 2005. Amid rumors of
erratic behavior, possible drug abuse, and/or mental instability, the question
“Where’s Dave?” circulated freely throughout popular media. Comedy Central
even capitalized on the unanswered query, using the phrase “Dave, phone
home” in television advertisements for reruns of Chappelle’s Show. Series regular Charlie Murphy spoke candidly about the impending death of the series:“It
was like the Tupac of TV shows. It came out and got everybody’s attention. It
was a bright shining star and, for some strange reason, it burned out quickly.”79
During Chappelle’s absence and his subsequent radio silence, Comedy Central
adjusted its lineup to include other comics of color, Carlos Mencia on The Mind
of Mencia and D. L. Hughley on Weekends at the D. L. The commercials for the
latter series even directly addressed the cooling effect that Chappelle’s disappearing act might have had on the position of black comics on Comedy Central, with Hughley stating, “You thought they wouldn’t give another brother a
show, didn’t you?” Although the former, Mind of Mencia, has had decent ratings,
it has not touched the widespread popularity of Chappelle’s Show.Thus, it is not
surprising that, despite Chappelle’s walkout, the $50-million two-season deal
remains in limbo—but the door is still open, according to Comedy Central.
“It was a clumsy dismount,” admitted the comic in an exclusive interview
with Time, in which he made it known that neither drug abuse nor mental
breakdown had caused him to seek refuge with a family friend in Durban,
South Africa.80 The intensity of the media attention to his flight matched the
level of popular cultural frenzy that his series had inspired. The comic maintained that his back-to-Africa movement had allowed him to gain perspective
in a space where he could maintain his anonymity—so that he could stay sane.
Chappelle broke his silence and stated on Oprah, in no uncertain terms, that he
was not crazy. The comic also supported the validity of his paranoia regarding
his series’ inner circle as he recounted how deeply he had been injured by the
claims made in the press about his self-imposed exile; particularly injurious was
Neal Brennan’s comment that his friend and writing partner was “spinning out
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of control.” Amid these heartfelt admissions, Chappelle also quipped,“What is a
black man without his paranoia.”81 While this line reflected his exquisite comic
timing, it also spoke to his belief that when a celebrity of color “blows up,” he
or she faces different travails from other industry stars—and his or her missteps
earn scrutiny that is rigorous at best and punitive at worst. At one of the many
times that he spoke directly to the audience during his two-hour appearance on
Inside the Actors Studio, he gave the budding artists a word of warning:“You guys
are students now, so you’re idealists.You don’t know about where art and corporate interests meet yet. Just prepare to have your heart broken. . . . Get your
Africa tickets ready, baby, because you have no idea.”82
The tenuousness of Chappelle’s position has been recognized in some journalistic corners. In her New York Times review of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party,
Manohla Dargis stated simply, “Turning your back on big money apparently
means one thing: you’re nuts. But Mr. Chappelle looked and sounded profoundly sane on James Lipton’s ‘‘Inside the Actors Studio’’ . . . where, between
cigarettes and jokes, he offered a mesmerizing, occasionally heart-melting
glimpse into both the pressures of his fish-bowl existence and what it can mean
for a black man when he makes white people laugh.”83
I mourn the loss of Chappelle’s Show as a contentious space for comedic
social discourse. I also have to admit that the series’ comic content, which was
often full of sociopolitically informed declarations on the American (and particularly the African American) condition, was often lacking in ideological
directives that did not seem vague and/or ambivalent, invite multiple readings—
which is a good thing and a bad thing.When, in retrospect, Chappelle provided
an assessment of the body of his television work, he seemed acutely aware of
the problematic aspects of his show: “I was doing sketches that were funny but
socially irresponsible. I felt like I was deliberately being encouraged, and I was
overwhelmed. It’s like you are cluttered with things and you don’t pay attention
to things like your ethics.”84
One might also hypothesize that Chappelle’s wariness about his series’
comic content came as a result of internalizing questions about the roots of
multiple audiences’ laughter. The lackadaisical cheekiness of his comic persona
seems tempered by a sense of introspection. No less witty after his time in South
Africa, Chappelle returned to the stage with a sense of artistic renewal.The intimacy of the stand-up stage (particularly in comedy clubs), the ability to react to
and interact with an audience, allows Chappelle a greater sense of comic autonomy—and a clearer sense of how they are reacting to the comedy as entertainment and as social discourse. Thus, the return of Chappelle to his show at
Comedy Central seems highly unlikely.
Since Chappelle began instructing his fans not to watch whatever fragments
of the abortive season 3 that Comedy Central might choose to broadcast (and
to boycott any DVDs of said material), both the advertising for and the buzz
about season 3 of Chappelle’s Show have faded from popular media memory. In
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the closing moments of his time with Oprah, Chappelle admitted that he would
like to do his show again (if a positive work environment could be created) and
would try to “upload” his half of the DVD revenue to the people, through various causes (from those benefiting survivors of Hurricane Katrina to a fund for
his old high school). Despite Winfrey’s words of caution (“Be careful, you need
boundaries. . . . You’re on national television) Chappelle continued, “I would
rather give the money to people other than the ones who were exploiting me.
And if I could benefit the people, how awesome would that be? . . . So even if I
say something socially irresponsible, it’s going to a socially responsible cause.”85
One could view Chappelle’s saga as the morality tale of a young comedian
who buckled under the pressure of being the hottest comic on the planet; however, that would oversimplify the complexity of the phenomena of Chappelle’s
persona in American popular culture. Chris Rock, who had been labeled the
“funniest man in America,” has progressively gained the ability to speak directly
to the criticism of his controversial material, as exemplified in his 60 Minutes
interview and his responses to post-Oscar critique. By the time Chappelle
returned from his “Durban retreat,” the easygoing insolence of his early
responses to the critique of his series’ racialized parody did not come so easily.
In an interview in February 2006, Chappelle concisely expressed his comedic
and ideological quandary: “There is a line of people who will understand
exactly what I’m doing and there is another group of people who are just fans,
like the people—the kind of people who scream, ‘I’m Rick James, b’ . . . at my
concert. They are along for a different kind of celebrity worship ride. They are
going to get something completely different—that concerns me.”86
While the series afforded him a national platform, as well as industrial and
cultural cachet, it became a contentious discursive space in which he was uncertain how his work could be interpreted and mobilized. In hindsight Chappelle,
who freely confessed that he loves his own jokes, became serious about the
nature of the laughter that he was eliciting: Chappelle’s statement, “I want to
make sure that I am dancing and not shuffling,” provides an uneasy inversion of
the notion that originally drove the series.87 No longer “dancing like nobody’s
watching,” Chappelle’s awareness of the reach of his comedic social discourse
has made it difficult to dance at all.
Nevertheless, the significance of Chappelle’s show, as well as his stand-up
performance, cannot be underestimated: his comic persona is arguably the
embodiment of the post-soul moment. In Chappelle’s comic discourse one can
hear a conflation of black comic voices: the cultural specificity of unabashedly
black characters like those of Flip Wilson; the contentious commentary of In
Living Color’s Homey the Clown, the radical black ex-con children’s entertainer
(created by Paul Mooney); the personal and social candor of Pryor, who made
sly audaciousness a staple of black comedy in the post-soul era; the insolence of
the Def Jam generation’s politics of differentiation and moments of pointed
sociopolitical critique reminiscent of Dick Gregory.Yet for all of the insolence
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and subversiveness that informs Chappelle’s humor, there is also an innate quality of likability that enables multiple audiences to discern some aspect of his
humor that speaks to and for them—and, at the same time, allows him great
license to be as controversial as he wants to be. In one reflective moment on
Lipton’s show the comic said, “I don’t know how this whole Dave Chappelle
thing is going to end but I feel like I’m going to be some kind of parable—
either what you’re supposed to do or not supposed to do. . . . I’m going to be a
legend or just that tragic (expletive) story, but I’m going to go all the way.”88
His statement made me think of Pryor and how his passing of the comic torch,
as it were, to Chappelle made perfect sense.
In the end, when discussing Chappelle, using the word persona is a misnomer; we are always actually discussing personae. The performance of his
comic discourse goes beyond inhabiting different character types for different
sketches and connects with actually speaking to multiple constituencies in the
process of articulating identity. While clearly blackness is privileged, Chappelle
speaks to the skater, the slacker, the hipster, the “backpacker,”89 and the aspiring
cultural critic, like me, who longs to see a call to action in his comic discourse.
The comic personae of Chappelle’s Show—as well as his stand-up—embody an
ambiguous and fragmented notion of blackness, which may well be the most
accurate representation of this construct at this historical moment. The series
occupied a space not easily mapped in theoretical terms. Neither the apolitical
patchwork of Fredric Jameson’s pastiche nor the purposefully intricate mosaic
of Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern parody, it stands as both representative text
and idiosyncratic anomaly.90 Norma Schulman discusses In Living Color in terms
of Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness—however, there are more than
two constructs, identities, ideologies being fought on the discursive plane of this
televisual text. I am also forced to examine my own point of annunciation, as a
partial insider. Are my own ambivalent feelings toward the spectatorship of the
series rooted in feeling as though my text has been co-opted? The promise and
problem of Chappelle’s Show and Chappelle’s comic personae is that the inebriated frat boys yelling “Whuuuuuut” are as much Chappelle’s constituency as I
am. From differing reading positions we are both experiencing a televisual text
that speaks to our historical moment—in ways that are clearer and yet more
ambiguous than Chappelle’s sketch comedy predecessors.
Po st sc ri p t
On March 3, 2006, I sat in the Paramount Theater in Vancouver, British
Columbia.Although I was in town for an academic conference, I felt compelled
to catch the late show of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party on its opening day. As I
scanned the enthusiastic crowd at the Cineplex, it was the demographic I might
have predicted: overwhelmingly young, male, and white. I must admit to feeling
a wave of mild dread as the batch of twenty-something males sitting behind me
began a chorus of “I’m rich, bitch” and their rendition of Lil’ Jon’s “Whuuts.”
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Again, the question that had inspired this study came into my mind: “I know
what I’m laughing at, but what are you laughing at?”
Once the film began, however, I was blissfully unconcerned with the reception of others. Drawn into the exuberance of Michel Gondry’s cinematic
representation of Chappelle’s vision, his new millennial Wattstax, there was
something both utopian and euphoric happening on the screen. In this instance
the nonlinear structure simulated the sense of memories, Chappelle’s memories,
thus pulling us into Dave’s subjectivity . . . Dave’s world. The semishaky handcam moments on the streets of Dayton, Ohio, and its environs captured Dave,
the post-soul Willie Wonka, handing out golden tickets redeemable for passage
and entrance to the Brooklyn block party. He passed them out generously to his
constituency—from two black teenaged boys, whose comfort with the camera
allowed us to see the semigoofiness of their unabashed excitement to the two
older white women, who work at the store where Chappelle buys cigarettes
when he’s at home, who confessed that they had known all along about his
comic phenom status but had respected his privacy and let him make his purchases in anonymity.
Like the cinematic realization of what Chappelle had done metaphorically
with the construction of his comic persona, the film, without prejudice and in
the spirit of inclusion (but not without a knowing wink to the camera), gathered a diverse cadre of fans, drawn to the comic and transported to the “concert that [Dave] had always wanted to see.” At once dreamlike and naturalistic,
the movement between snippets of rehearsal sessions and the conversations
between Chappelle and the Okayplayer virtuosos he had recruited (Mos Def,
Jill Scott, Common, Erykah Badu, and The Roots) seemed less like a behindthe-scenes documentary than being backstage with friends of a friend who
were doing a show.The only thing that separated the depiction of the conscious
rap elite and those who were there to see them play was the fact that the former were seen performing on stage: no captions identified any of the speakers,
whether it was Wyclef Jean or Brian Milsap, hip-hop legend and college band
director, respectively.This democratizing sensibility is best illustrated when one
considers that Ohio’s Central State University Mighty Marauders, the band that
earned a spot on the Block Party bill when it happened to be practicing as Chappelle shot the film’s opening, had more individual and group screen time than
Kanye West, the hip-hop superstar they accompanied on his song “Jesus Walks.”.
Although I have already begun to look at Dave Chappelle’s Block Party as
media scholar, however, the impressions here are those of a spectator—in all
honesty, a fan.91 The film, like the recent interviews and appearances made by
Chappelle confirmed many of the things I had theorized about the flight to
Africa, the pedagogical impulses in his comedy and the liberatory potential of
“dancing like no one is watching.” The Block Party was a celebration of folks
joining together to celebrate multiple articulations of black culture, hip-hop
culture, post-soul culture. Chappelle, as the giddy yet cool host, had ushered us
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into his worlds. It was a glorious moment, when he was still Comedy Central’s
$50-million dollar man, before “The Nigger Pixie” and before the gnawing
question about the nature of the laughter made it too difficult to dance. But
even amid the celebration there were two moments that could be read as bittersweet: one was a conversation between Chappelle and ?uestlove Thompson of
The Roots, explaining the affinity between Dave and many of the Okayplayers;
the other was a semiconfessional moment, with Chappelle on the rooftop overlooking the Bed Sty block party site.Thompson’s statement that “the thing that
all [the folks performing at the block party] have in common is that our audience doesn’t look like us” directly speaks to the issue of having a diverse fan
populace that may or may not be able or willing to read both the text and subtext of the creative work. Chappelle comically redirected the conversation
when Thompson began to talk about the shows full of “wild frat boys . . . interrupting [Dave’s] narrative,” yelling for Rick James, while Dave was trying to
“tell stories,” the circuitous series of jokes that often led to a punch line with a
sociopolitical bite. However, the question of laughter and spectatorship across
medium and across culture was, again, raised in connection with the legions of
Chappelle’s Show fans. It was even clearer on the rooftop, when Chappelle said,
“There has to be a separation between the public image and the private image.
I wanted to give something beyond that public image.”The Block Party was his
gift to his audiences. Euphoric, inclusive, and transient, it was the promise of a
cross-cultural happening—it was a celebration.Yet fast-forward to the time of
the film’s release. On the talk-show circuit, promoting the movie (and telling his
side of the “Where’s Dave” saga), Chappelle, although candid, mischievous, and
as funny as ever, was seemingly a bit nervous (as signified by the chain-smoking
on Inside the Actors Studio). It seems that once you are aware of the power and
the reach of your voice and your comic discourse and the impact of the representations in your comedy, a level of caution is inserted where the fearlessness
once had been. I don’t know whether that is good or bad. It just is.
As I left the theater and strolled back toward the hotel, I eavesdropped on
a group of hipsters a few paces behind me (a black male, two white males, one
Asian woman, and one white woman). One young woman raved about how
fabulous Common and Erykah Badu had been. The other female said she
thought Dave was hilarious when he was out with regular people, even repeating one of his earliest comments to the camera: (after being warmly greeted by
two elderly white people), he stated, “Old people fucking love me.You know
you’re doing something right when old people love you.” One of the males was
a big Blackstar (Mos Def/Talib Kweli) fan and remarked how “cool” it was
when they brought Chairman Fred Hampton out during the song “Umi Says,”
with the bridge being replaced by Hampton’s call for the freeing of political
prisoners.92 “Was that the song with ‘I want my people to be free’ in it?” a
female voice asked. I smiled as I listened to the male voice confirm Hampton’s
identity and then proceed to explain who Hampton and four of the political
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prisoners he specifically named, the “New York Three” and “Mumia,” actually
were.93 Finally, I heard the voice of a male that had previously not joined in on
the conversation reply to the question,“What did you think?” His reply,“It was
okay but not as funny as the show,” revived the Greek chorus in my head: I
know what I’m laughing at, but what are you laughing at? But by the time
I could fight some sense of decorum, to turn around and glance at the speaker, I
saw them entering a coffeehouse.There was a part of me that wanted to go back
and question them, but in the end I just walked back to the hotel and listened
to “Umi Says” on my I-Pod.
The title of this chapter describes Chappelle at this historical moment.The
task of the provocateur is to incite dissension—to make people question things
as they are—it’s not necessarily his job to provide the answers. In the end I don’t
know what you’re laughing at—and that’s what worries me. Apparently, that is
what continues to worry Dave Chappelle, too.
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Epilogue
Laughing Sad, Laughing Mad
I began writing this epilogue days after Hurricane Katrina
devastated the United States’ Gulf Coast.The childhood hometown of my parents, Pass Christian, Mississippi, was devastated by wind, water, and debris—and
relief was slow in coming.As my mother and the rest of my family awaited word
from friends and relatives who lived in Katrina’s path, all of whom survived and
many of whom lost everything, it was difficult to think about comedy. Nothing
was funny.Yet in the wake of Katrina, as the “the blame game” rhetoric was spun
and as the stories of those who survived hurricane conditions only to be
subjected to the danger and squalor of the Superdome and Convention Center
came to light, one thing became clear: a majority of black and white Americans
witnessed the same natural disaster but internalized the multiple tragedies and
made meaning from the mediated images of Katrina and its aftermath in decidedly different ways.
According to a poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press, “seven-in-ten blacks (71%) say the disaster shows that racial inequality
remains a major problem in the country; a majority of whites (56%) say this was
not a particularly important lesson of the disaster.”1 Similar statistics were generated by Time’s poll; when asked whether “the race or low income level of the
victims slowed government relief efforts,” 60 percent of white Americans
believed that these were not mitigating factors as opposed to 73 percent of
blacks, who felt that they were.2 In the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, seven of
ten African Americans and three in ten white Americans were convinced the
response would have been faster if “the victims had been in white suburbs rather
than a predominantly black inner-city.”3 Perhaps what I found most disconcerting was that these numbers did not surprise me.
As myriad travesties and controversies emerged, I sat glued to the television,
watching an American tragedy through the lens of blackness. It was impossible
for me not to look at innumerable black faces and think, “That could be me;
that could be my family.” And while all natural disasters can elicit that response,
my strong and uneasy identification was intensified by the gnawing feeling that
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race determined access to and quality of relief.The faces in the Superdome and
the Convention Center were predominantly black: thus, the repeated references
to violence, squalor, and danger in these “refuges” were tied to blackness. As
Katrina survivors like Denise Moore described, after days of being “trapped” at
the Convention Center, many felt as though they had “been brought there to
die. . . . Without help. Without food. Without water. Without sanitary conditions—as though it’s perfectly all right for these ‘animals’ to reside in a frickin’
sewer like rats. Because there was nothing but black people back there.”4
The fact that many of those who did not leave were not able to do so was
lost on those who, as Illinois senator Barack Obama stated with indignation,
“[were] so detached from the realities of inner city life in New Orleans . . . that
they couldn’t conceive of the notion that [residents] couldn’t load up their
SUV’s, put $100 worth of gas in there and some sparkling water and drive off
to a hotel and check in with a credit card.”5
Furthermore, at a Black Congressional Caucus roundtable with invited
members of the press, Democratic Representative from South Carolina James
Clyburn candidly addressed the subject that few wanted to address directly:
“Nobody wants to talk about poverty. Nobody wants to talk about race.
Nobody wants to talk about the nexus of the two.”6 So at least for me there was
a certain symmetry in the fact that President Bush jovially vowed that Trent
Lott’s lost mansion would rise again and that “we” would rebuild him “a fantastic house” on the same day that Kanye West called into question the “compassion” of the “compassionate conservative.”
On September 2, 2005, West veered from the script, as he and (startled)
comic actor Mike Myers made an appeal for contributions during NBC’s live
telecast, A Concert for Hurricane Relief. Beginning with his reflection on the
racially coded use of the word looting (“I hate the way they portray us in the
media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. See a white family, it says
they’re looking for food”)7 and ending with what arguably became the most
oft-repeated sound bite of the Katrina disaster:“George Bush doesn’t care about
black people.” Although the remark was excised from the West Coast broadcast,
West’s comments brought the issue of race into the forefront of the discussion
of multiple aspects of the relief effort. Ed Gordon, host of NPR’s News and Notes
with Ed Gordon (a program cosponsored by the African American Radio Consortium), emphasized that West “spoke for scores of Black people.”8 Gordon
went on to elaborate on the crux of West’s foregrounding of race in relation to
Katrina relief: “There are those who suggest that the initially slow response had
less to do with race and more to do with social class. Such comments miss the
fact that it is virtually impossible to separate the color of your skin from the
opportunities you are given to rise above the social and economic conditions
you were born to.”9
While the assertion of Morris Reid, Democratic strategist, that “it took a
28-year-old rapper, a popular culture figure, to get America talking about a real
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issue” might be an overstatement, one could argue that more Americans are
aware of what West said than the fact that the Democratic National Committee Chair, Howard Dean, made a similar observation less than a week later.10
The fact that West is a popular culture figure, hailed as “Hip-Hop’s Class Act”
on the cover of Time (Aug. 29, 2005), the week before his revelation about the
media, Katrina relief, and Bush, raises the question of who has sway over the
hearts and minds of the American populace.Which had more impact on Middle
America, the New York Times articles on the travesty and tragedy of survivors in
the Superdome and Houston’s Astrodome or the episodes of The Oprah Winfrey
Show, where Winfrey and celebrities in her Angel network (including Julia
Roberts, John Travolta, and Chris Rock) went on location in the Gulf Coast?
In a society fascinated by celebrity and the entertainment industry, the presence
and/or the lived politics of these A-list performers draws the attention of the
press and, in turn, the people. Just as Dick Gregory used his high profile (as a
black comedian who had experienced crossover success) to draw attention to
the civil rights struggle, when given the national forum of the benefit show,
West used his industrial cachet and intense popularity with a racially diverse
cross section of music consumers to make the American mainstream acknowledge what many blacks in the United States were feeling. And when Kanye
spoke, for better or for worse, people listened. During his three-hour comic
marathon at Eastern Michigan University on September 30, 2005, Dave Chappelle praised West’s truth-telling as “courageous. . . . I’m proud. Proud,” then
adding (after a beat), with a shake of his head,“I’m gonna miss him.” One might
argue that Chappelle’s bit underscores the (at least, spiritual) kinship between
Gregory and West—hinting that there is often a price to be paid for public
political candor.
Furthermore, when Bill Cosby came onstage at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s
‘Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Concert’ to Benefit the Salvation Army on September 17, 2005, it seemed both ironic and appropriate that it was the conflation of
his position as televisual icon and black comic legend that gave power and resonance to his appeal. One of many artists (black and white) who came out to
support the relief effort for New Orleans, Cosby never used the word black in
his five-minute seriocomic monologue, yet, whether intentional or not, the
repeated use of the phrase “the people” seemed a synonym for “our people.”
This happened to the people.The Constitution says,“for the people, by the
people, of the people.” The people. And then in this United States, the
people vote.The people that vote, vote people into office and those people
are supposed to serve the people. [Pause] You see where I’m going? [laughter and applause] And their job is to serve the people. But the people who
got into office, it appears, got into office, and forgot [a smattering of
applause]—let me finish—the people. Now one might also think that those
people who were slow coming may not have been the people who were
supposed to be serving the people . . .
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32. Bill Cosby talks about “the people” to the people at Higher Ground, a post-Katrina
benefit at Lincoln Center. “Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert,” Jazz at
Lincoln Center, Sep. 17, 2005.
While Cosby also made an impassioned call for individual and institutional
action based on “integrity, accountability and the fact that we are Americans,”
themes familiar to his often controversial discourse on the failings within the
black community (particularly the black “lower classes”), the overall sensibility
of his speech seemed to present a civil rights era ethos that more than fleetingly
addressed post-soul thought—his urging to use the vote as a weapon was tempered by the acknowledgment that the government, as things stand, was not
serving the needs of [black] people. While I willingly admit that this reading
puts an optimistic spin on what I would call the mellowing of Cosby’s rhetoric,
it was, nevertheless, the power of his persona that affords him both the venue
and influence to speak across lines of race and class.
Yet given both Cosby’s iconic status and the disparate views of his directives for the black community, one must consider how the effectiveness of
comedic discourse can be also diminished.
I came to this conclusion as a result of another, more personal discovery
that came post-Katrina—one that also speaks directly to my work, albeit work
not yet done. I was restless, irritable, and discontent over the positive spin generated by Bush’s “army of compassion” and “urban homesteading act” and the
fact that the questionable sensitivity of former first lady Barbara Bush’s observations about how those folks in Houston’s Astrodome, who were “underprivileged, anyway” were doing “quite well” (after being left displaced, uprooted,
and traumatized) drew far less fervent media scrutiny that Kanye West’s assess-
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ment of the president’s investment in black folks’ welfare.11 I decided that I
needed a bit of televisual solace before returning to my work. My TiVoed offerings did not seem sufficient, so I reached for a DVD I had not watched in a year:
Steve Harvey’s HBO One Man show (2001), filmed in Augusta, Georgia.
When Harvey came onstage in his double-breasted, yellow-suited glory, I
eased back on the couch and sank into the comedy. My favorite bit offers a variation on his “White People vs. Black People” oeuvre:
Black people handle getting fired different from white folks.You can’t fire
us the same. It ain’t gonna go good. See, the difference between firing black
people and white people is this: when you fire white people, they don’t
ever see it coming [in white voice] “What are you talking about? What are
you, nuts? For crying out loud!” . . .They got a whole list of things they go
down when they think they ass is gone because they can’t believe they’re
getting fired. Black people, on the other hand, we figure [with tired resignation], “Any day now, my ass is gonna be outta here.” ’Cause we know if
there’s gonna be some firing going on: we’re first. So, we pretty much
expect it.
What follows is the tale of two terminations—of Bob, the amiable and
oblivious white employee, and Willie Turner, a brother who “has been expecting it.” Bob’s denial over being “let go” is depicted as a product of disbelief that
he could be “let go,” and, while he bemoans his fate to the boss, he departs in
quiet devastation. “But,” as Harvey notes with mock severity, “Yeah, but when
you go out there to fire Willie, it ain’t gonna go like that.” Replicating the exact
process used to fire the Anglo employee, the boss attempts to fire Willie as amiably, privately, and quietly as he had Bob; this is not to be. After describing
Willie’s initial refusal to talk privately (“I got a desk right here. Whatever you
want to say to Willie, you can say here.”), Harvey shifts into the boss’s point of
view, who “knows that he needs to get this altercation behind closed doors right
now because Willie is getting ready to show his whole ass. Willie’s fixin’ to act
a fool.” Harvey gesticulates madly (and thuggishly) as the angry wide-eyed
Willie dares his boss to “Say it. Say I’m fired. I’ll burn this mother down. . . . Say
it.You better not say I’m fired. Say it. Say it. I’ll kill your kids. I’ll kill your kids.”
The bit culminates with Willie, having, indeed, “shown his whole ass,” making
the demand for his severance pay immediately:“Gimme my check,” an insistent
demand that induces the boss to summon the authorities.
I laughed like I had not laughed in a long time. I was laughing at differences
of experience, as well as differences in perception. I found solace in the nuances
of the regionalized black vernacular and the articulation of another African
American comedic discursive, inflected more by the tone and meter of R&B
balladeers than by hip-hop. While my viewing choice was undoubtedly based,
in part, on the desire to lose myself in comedy that was not part of my current
work, it also provided a space where there was no translation, explanation, or
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justification necessary. While others might have turned to more mainstreamed
comedic fare, The Cosby Show or even Chappelle’s Show, I chose what I referred
to earlier as “For Us By Us” comedy. In moments when issues of race appear in
boldface to people of color and are illegible to large segments of dominant culture, the burden of explanation always falls on the marginalized group, either
directly or indirectly—and along with it comes the frustration over not being
understood or heard or even acknowledged. One longs for either a literal or
virtual safe communal space—an enclave. For me the comedic discursive space
of Harvey’s one-man show fulfilled that function. Catherine Squires asserts that
“the enclave is signified by the utilization of spaces and discourses that are hidden from the dominant public . . . dedicated to Black interests and needs.”12
A large swath of black comedy in post-soul America (and innumerable
black comic personae including Harvey’s) remained outside the sphere of this
study: those who—by design and by default—remain ensconced within enclaves
of black comedic discourse.As Squires also notes,“Enclaves provide the bedrock
for marginal publics even when they benefit from increased political rights or
friendlier social relations” and “the continued presence . . . of ‘Black-only’ spaces
and media fulfill functions . . . that mainstream public arenas, institutions and
media institutions have not.”13 However, no less complex or conflicted than the
comedic discourse of those who have crossed over, there are ways in which For
Us By Us comedy resonates as much with laughing to keep from crying as it
does with laughing mad. Harvey’s tale of Willie Turner acts as a comedic anecdote about anger, frustration, and resignation, telling it “like it is” rather than
railing against why it is that way.
Furthermore, disparities arise when considering the gendered aspects of
black comedy. Harvey’s fellow “Kings of Comedy,” Cedric the Entertainer,
Bernie Mac, and D. L. Hughley, have gained varying degrees of mainstream success while remaining tied to their “roots” in the “Def Jam persona.” However,
while the names of black female comics, like “The Queens of Comedy” (Sommore, Miss Laura Hayes, Adele Givens, Mo’Nique)14 draw audiences on the
black comedy circuit (and some niched televisual spaces like BET’s Comic View),
access to the comic mainstream is not the only difficulty for the black female
comic.15 Cheryl Underwood’s impassioned plea in her acceptance speech for
“Best Stand Up” at the BET Comedy Awards (September 27, 2005)—“Black
directors, hire us”—is reminiscent of Whoopi Goldberg’s assertion that “they
don’t know what to do with me.”These Original Kings and “Invisible” Queens
assuredly warrant a volume of their own in which one can tease out the intricate construction of For Us By Us comedy—as an enclave public sphere and as
an industrial as well as sociocultural construct. The study of this fluid segment
of black comedy, inflected by region, class, and, of course, gender, which offers
consternation and resignation along with solace, seems the next logical step in
analyzing the significance of black comedic social discourse—and the nature of
the laughter.
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According to Antonio Gramsci, “Every social group . . . creates together
with itself, organically one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also
in the social and political fields.”16 The black comics of Laughing Mad represent
one or more strata of black organic intellectuals. Although the black comedy of
both the civil rights era comics and post-soul comics, like the entertainmentbased moments of philanthropy discussed earlier, might seem unlikely repositories for serious discourse on race and class, it is within spaces not marked as
necessarily pedantic or particularly threatening that folks might actually become
open to questioning their ideological presuppositions—whether during their
spectatorial experience or in their postviewing musing. And the comic messenger makes a difference. Comedy is a powerful discursive tool; the notion (attributed to multiple sources from George Bernard Shaw and Joe Orton to my
eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Roshko) that if one gets an audience laughing, then while their mouths are open, you can shove the truth in, seems quite
applicable here. I remained committed to the idea that the articulations of racial
identity in black comedy speak to a multiplicity of reflections on the African
American condition; the comic personae of Murphy, Rock, Goldberg, and
Chappelle give voice to the jadedly hopeful, politically and pop culturally savvy,
and media wary iterations of blackness in post-soul America. In the introduction to this book I inquired whether the comic players themselves, like many of
us in the audience, are laughing mad. In the end the answer is yes and no, and
my jaw is tight.
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N ote s
Introduction
1. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, 2nd ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 237.
2. Wil Haygood,“Why Negro Humor Is So Black,” American Prospect 11, no. 26 (2000):
26.
3. Dick Gregory, “Speech at St. John’s Baptist Church,” Birmingham, AL (May 20,
1963), http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/dgregory.html
(accessed March 28, 2006).
4. Nelson George, Hip Hop America (New York:Viking, 1998), xi.
5. The contemporary “sit-in” movement began on February 1, 1960, when four students
from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College at Greensboro sat down
at the segregated lunch counter in a Woolworth store and were refused service. One
could even argue for setting the beginning of the era with those born after Brown v.
Board of Education, like Bernie Mac, Steve Harvey, and, of course,Whoopi Goldberg.
6. Mark Anthony Neal, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic
(New York: Routledge, 2002), 3.
7. Michael Eric Dyson, Open Mike: Reflections on Philosophy, Race, Sex, Culture, and Religion (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003), 256–57.
8. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans.
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981),
159–60.
9. J. Fred MacDonald, Blacks and White TV: African Americans in Television since 1948
(New York: D. McKay, 1992), 123.
10. Donald Bogle, Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television (New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001), 7.
11. Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 3.
12. A statement made by Gray in the Marlon Riggs documentary Color Adjustment
(1990).
13. Herman Gray, Watching Race:Television and the Struggle for “Blackness” (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 32.
14. Ibid., 88.
15. Ibid., 89.
16. Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 68.
17. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of
Blacks in American Films, 3rd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1991), 280.
18. This chapter focuses on Goldberg’s comedic work, although one might argue that,
with the exception of her film debut as Celie in Spielberg’s The Color Purple (1985),
the same assertions can be made about the “integrated” nature of the filmic worlds
of her dramatic works as well.
19. Neal, Soul Babies, 120.
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Notes to Pages 15–24
Chapte r 1. From Neg ro to Blac k
1. Dick Gregory, interview by Juan Williams, Talk of the Nation, Oct. 19, 2000, NPR,
transcript.
2. Bruce Britt, “Leaping Barrier with Laughter: Flip Wilson, a Comic for the Times,”
Washington Post, Nov. 28, 1998, F1.
3. Phil Berger, The Last Laugh:The World of Stand-Up Comics (New York: Copper Square
Press, 2000), 121.
4. Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to
Chris Rock (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 497.
5. Bell and Howell’s Close Up! What’s So Funny, directed by Helen Jean Rogers, ABC,
June 12, 1961.
6. Redd Foxx and Norma Miller, “Dick Gregory,” Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black
Humor (Pasadena, CA: W. Ritchie Press, 1977), 180–81. Mort Sahl also frequently
played this hipster San Francisco night spot with a similarly politicized style of
humor, prompting many to call “Dick the Black Mort Sahl and Mort, the white
Dick Gregory.”
7. The Steve Allen Show, directed by Steve Binder, written by Arne Sultan and Marvin
Worth, syndicated, Jan. 9, 1964.
8. Ibid.
9. The Jack Paar Program, directed by Hal Gurnee, written by Marty Farrell, NBC,
March 1, 1963.
10. Malcolm X, “On the Afro-American Problem as a World Problem,” Dec. 13, 1964,
http://www.brothermalcolm.net/mxwords/whathesaidarchive.html (accessed Nov.
10, 2005).
11. The Ed Sullivan Show, directed by John Moffit, CBS, Nov. 15, 1970.
12. Gregory received 1.5 million votes, and Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey
lost the election by a mere 510,000 votes.
13. Chris Weisman, “Dick Gregory: the ‘Nightlife’ Interview,” Nightlife, Aug. 11, 1999,
22.
14. Berger, The Last Laugh, 192.
15. Dick Gregory, interview by Noah Adams, All Things Considered, NPR, Nov. 16, 1995.
16. Cedric Muhammad, “Political Mondays: Dick Gregory: A Valuable Man,”
BlackElectorate.com, June 20, 2005, http://www.blackelectorate.com/
print_article.asp?ID= 1396 (accessed June 21, 2005).
17. The activities of COINTELPRO in the late sixties and early seventies were focused
on “disrupting and discrediting” radical political organizations from SNCC and the
Black Panthers to SDS and various components of the antiwar movement. Given
Gregory’s history with COINTELPRO and the revelations about the group’s activities with Black leaders that has emerged in the past ten years (as public access to
their files has increased), it is not surprising that the comic/activist would look warily at the group’s activities and publicly encourage others to do the same: as early as
1968 the passionately nonviolent activist and then presidential candidate was
included on the group’s lists of “Black Nationalist Hate Group Leaders” along with
Fred Hampton, Geronimo Pratt, and Stokely Carmichael (see Paul Wolf ’s Web site,
www.cointel.org).
18. C-Span Coverage of the Million Worker March, Oct. 17, 2004. It should also be
noted that Chappelle has stated in interviews that he grew up listening to Dick Gregory. Although this does not offer definitive proof of the elder comic’s influence on
the younger comic’s choice of characterization for President Bush (as a “thug”), it
does make clear that, unlike other post-soul comics, Dave Chappelle knows Dick
Gregory.
19. Daniel Pike,“Activist Issues Bold Predictions during Press Conference,” Illinois Spotlight, Copley News Service, Feb. 25, 2005.
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20. Vic Sussman, “The Comic Who Broke All the Rules,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 22,
1998, Calendar sec., F55.The event was the evening honoring Richard Pryor as the
first recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for Humor. When asked how it felt to see
Pryor so honored, especially since Gregory had been one of the first black performers to attack racism and government corruption with slashing humor, the
comic activist replied, “It’s a great night. . . . I may have opened the door, but it was
for a genius like him to go through.”
21. Dick Gregory, interview by Juan Williams, Talk of the Nation, Oct. 19, 2000.
22. Quoted in “Biography: Kennedy Center Honorees,” Kennedy Center Honors, Dec.
1998, http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/specialevents/honors/history/
honoree/cosby.html (accessed Sep. 5, 2000).
23. The Jack Paar Program, directed by Hal Gurnee, written by Marty Farrell, NBC, Dec.
11, 1963.
24. The Jack Paar Program, directed by Hal Gurnee, written by Marty Farrell, NBC, May
8, 1964.
25. There is a reference to his father’s alcoholism in this bit—referring to the difficulty
encountered when anesthetizing alcoholics. Cosby, as his father, counts backwards
from 100,“4, 3, 2, 1. Now what do you want me to do?” No other reference is made
in this routine.
26. This routine serves as an interesting counterpoint to Eddie Murphy’s “Ice Cream”
routine, which acknowledges how cruel children can be as it makes a superficial
commentary about class.
27. Elvis Mitchell, “So Cool, He Sometime Stings,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 2002, E1.
28. It should be noted that the construct of the “Super Negro” was an invention of
white creator/producers and bore little relationship to the African American experience at that time.
29. This was also a time when Cosby was doing films that were not family friendly, like
Uptown Saturday Night (discussed later in this chapter); its sequel, Let’s Do It Again;
and the gritty sex romp meets quasi-Altman seriocomic take on the ambulance
industry, Mother, Jugs and Speed.
30. Bogle, Primetime Blues, 169.
31. Ibid., 169–70.
32. The logic, sensibility, and worldview of Cosby himself completely informed the
construction of Dr. Huxtable. The line between the stand-up persona and the television character often blurred in the act-based sitcoms that followed The Cosby Show
(Roseanne Connor/Roseanne Barr on Roseanne, Tim Taylor/Tim Allen on Home
Improvement, Jerry Seinfeld/Jerry Seinfeld on Seinfeld); however, the conflation of
Cosby and Huxtable exemplified the most skillful utilization of that blurry line.
33. The overwhelming success of Bill Cosby: Himself undoubtedly influenced Brandon
Tartikoff at NBC to champion the Carsey-Werner series, although, reportedly, the
working-class family suggested by Cosby was upscaled for media consumption during the Reagan years.
34. This (arguably) laudable quality in the construction of Cosby’s comic persona masks
some actual subversiveness in his comedy, particularly in the televisual comic persona in his landmark sitcom. For example, what other Black man, besides Bill Cosby,
could play an OB/GYN with patients of a variety of races and ethnicities on primetime television without significant ruckus on any front?
35. Bambi L. Haggins, “There’s No Place like Home: The American Dream, AfricanAmerican Identity, and the Situation Comedy,” Velvet Light Trap (spring 1999): 29.
36. Gray, Watching Race, 80.
37. Linda K. Fuller, The Cosby Show:Audiences, Impact, Implications (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 69.
38. Issues of class and other less urbane constructions of the urban black experience
were not directly confronted in the series—although some might argue that the
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39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
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addition of Clair’s cousin from Bedford-Stuyvesant (Erika Alexander) in 1990 may
have been a response to the criticism over the fiscal insulation of the Huxtable
clan.
Interestingly, the main signifier of wealth in this instance is the art in what has been
previously constructed as the “Black middle class” decor of the Huxtable brownstone. In this episode Vanessa is seeking the acceptance of the “popular girls” and
realizes the cultural cachet of their economic standing after the girls comment on
the painting (Ellis Wilson’s The Funeral Procession) over the fireplace.Vanessa admits
that it cost $11,000 and explains that the artist was Clair’s great-uncle. While this
provides a forum for showcasing African American art and culture, one of the aspects
of the series that was often lauded, it also establishes a sense of lineage—at least for
Clair—a clear connection to the black cultural elite.
Quoted in Gray, Watching Race, 80.
Haggins, “There’s No Place like Home,” 30.
The series run was marked by personal tragedies. In 1997 Cosby’s twenty-sevenyear-old son, Ennis, was murdered, and in 2000 Madeline Kahn, a regular on the
series, lost her battle with cancer.
Haggins, “There’s No Place like Home,” 29.
Cosby never broke into the Nielsen top twenty during its run; during its first and
most-watched season, it reached its highest rating, twenty-first.
Everybody Loves Raymond, with comic Ray Romano as the series’ central everyguy,
was the highly rated centerpiece of the Monday night sitcom block on CBS. It is
also interesting, however, that for a majority of the series’ run the programming
strategies of the netlets, UPN and the WB, may have also siphoned away the audience for Cosby: with the nontraditional family sitcom In the House (think Who’s the
Boss? with an injured NFL player as the nanny), starring actor, choreographer, and
former A Different World producer Debbie Allen and Rapper L. L. Cool on UPN and
the new millennial version of The Waltons (think a church instead of a mountain) in
7th Heaven on the WB.
As I sat with my Gen Y surrogate son, Kevin, we were both relatively blasé about
seeing Cosby onstage. Although I had grown up listening to his material and watching The Cosby Show, as a media theorist I had spent far too much time studying the
representational politics of the televisual Cosby to see his work as unproblematic.
Nonetheless, when he came onstage, in sweats and a U-Mass sweatshirt, both of us
turned to each other and said (aloud, I am embarrassed to say), “That’s Bill Cosby.”
Not being prone to celebrity awe, I was surprised by my reaction—but then again,
it is not every day that one sees an icon.
Teresa Wiltz,“Bill Cosby in Vintage Form, No Lashing Out, Just Some Good Stories
at Wolf Trap,” Washington Post, July 10, 2004, C1.
The comic’s controversial comments will be discussed further in the conclusion of
this volume.
Watkins, On the Real Side, 521.
Foxx and Miller, “Flip Wilson,” Redd Foxx Encyclopedia, 196.
“When You’re Hot,You’re Hot,” Time, Jan. 31, 1972, 57.
Interestingly, long before there was Cheech and Chong or the boys from Half Baked
(Dave Chappelle, Jim Breuer, et al.), there were comedic voices in the early sixties
that had a hint of the countercultural wave to come, as exemplified by Jenkins’s
benignly constructed drug addiction.
In much the same way that comics have used (and continue to use) alcoholism
and/or drug addiction as comic fodder, without addressing the sociological or
sociopolitical ramifications or root causes of the disease, Wilson’s junkie is sweetly
inept—arguably the antithesis of either Lightnin’ Bug or Junior, the protagonists of
Pryor’s “junkie and wino” routine, a version of which would later be performed on
The Flip Wilson Show.
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54. An Evening with Flip Wilson, Museum of Television Seminar, New York City, Sep. 23,
1993.
55. Dan Sullivan,“Flip Wilson Finds Comic Note in Nation’s Long Hot Summer,” New
York Times, July 17, 1968, 37.
56. Ibid.
57. Josh Greenfield,“Flip Wilson:‘My Life Is My Own,’” New York Times, Nov. 14, 1971,
D17.
58. Robert Hilburn, “Personality Means Flip Wilson,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 16, 1970,
G17.
59. Watkins, On the Real Side, 522.
60. Quoted in Hilburn, “Personality,” G2.
61. Ibid., G1.
62. Ibid.
63. Greenfield, “Flip Wilson,” D17.
64. Christine Acham, Revolution Televised: Prime Time and the Struggle for Black Power
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 68–69.
65. In 1993 the comic recounted trying to slip unnoticed into a female impersonator
show in Denver (he didn’t want his presence at the performance to call his sexuality
into question).Toward the end of the show the headliner called for the house lights
to be turned up and thanked Wilson “for making what we do possible and thank you
for your contribution to the well being of the gay community.” Despite his wariness
about the use of drag being equated with homosexuality,Wilson was touched by the
impromptu tribute, stating, “That stopped me right in my tracks.” Curiously, the
series’ producer Bob Henry followed Wilson’s statement by asserting that Wilson was
not doing drag: “Flip created such an honest work of art with Geraldine. . . . Some
people, who are rather superficial, would say he’s working in drag. Baloney! He created such a perfect, perfect characterization with Geraldine. Milton Berle . . . that
was drag. He’d come out with big lipstick and the balloons and high heels.That was
drag. But, in Flip’s case, it was a work of art thank god a comedy work of art.That’s
why it sustained. Classic humor endures, things that are classic last forever. Geraldine
got such big laughs . . . because it is indeed a work of art” (An Evening with Flip
Wilson, Museum of Television Seminar, Los Angeles, March 12, 1993).
67. Bogle, Primetime Blues, 181.
68. Acham, Revolution Televised, 73.
69. John Leonard,“Flip Wilson,” Life, Jan. 22, 1971, 12. Leonard continues to assert “that
[Wilson] doesn’t frighten anybody . . . wouldn’t hurt you anymore than . . . Carol
Burnett or Ed Sullivan would hurt you” and that feeling “undeserving of [Wilson’s]
harmlessness . . . I know he wouldn’t hurt me but maybe, just maybe, he should.”
70. MacDonald, Blacks and White TV, 180.
71. An Evening with Flip Wilson, Museum of Television Seminar, Los Angeles, March 12,
1993.
73. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, NBC, May 20, 1981.
74. Richard Pryor (with Todd Gold), Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences (New
York: Pantheon, 1995), 93.
76. Pryor, Convictions, 113.
77. The ludicrousness of this exercise in seventies domcom relevance is exacerbated by
the episode’s B-line, in which Danny goes to the Pantheresque Afro-American Cultural Society—which yields the cringe-worthy result of the preteen red-haired hustler of the family being given a beret and being made an honorary member.
78. Mo’ Funny: Black Comedy in America, written and directed by Yvonne Smith, HBO
Films, 1993.
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79. James McPherson, “The New Comic Style of Richard Pryor,” New York Times
Magazine, April 27, 1975, 242.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Pryor’s revised recreation of the “Junkie and Wino” routine for The Flip Wilson Show
(1973) provides yet another indication of what might have been had Pryor been able
to survive on network television. In the sketch Pryor, as both Junior and Lightnin’
Bug Johnson, presents the conversation between two dispossessed figures, both of
whom have turned to “substances” to assuage sociohistorically specific pains, as they
speak to each other across the generational divide.
83. MacDonald, Blacks and White TV, 193.
84. Lily, directed by Rick Wallace, written by Rosalyn Drexler et al., CBS, Nov. 2, 1973.
85. George, Hip Hop America, 36.
88. Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 139–40.
89. Wattstax, directed by Mel Stuart, Columbia Pictures, 1973.
90. Jill Nelson, “Pryor Knowledge: The Rage, Vulnerability, and Painful Honesty of
Richard Pryor’s Comedy Changed America Forever,” Salon, Nov. 24, 1998,
http://www.salon.com/bc/1998/11/24bc.html (accessed Aug. 15, 2004).
91. This notion of Pryor being given representational and/or ideological passes is engaged
further in the discussion of the cinematic constructions of his comic persona.
92. There were only two instances when the seven-second delay was utilized on SNL
in its twenty-eight-year history: Pryor in 1975 and Andrew Dice Clay in 1990.
93. The original opening is now available on the DVD of The Richard Pryor Show.
94. James Brown, “Pryor Miffed,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 14, 1977, G4.
95. A more detailed textual analysis of the series will be undertaken in the book’s final
chapter in relationship to In Living Color and Chappelle’s Show.
96. In the fall of 1977 Redd Foxx starred in a short-lived variety series on ABC.
97. It is interesting that much of the black culture overtly interjected into Pryor’s show
during its short run is not from contemporary popular culture but rather from a
more distant black past. In one sequence the mise-en-scène of a postwar Harlem
nightclub is meticulously re-created in style, music, and dance. In the twenty-minute
seriocomic narrative passage Pryor is cast as a soldier returning from World War II
to find his world and his girl have changed; in another, an extended performance of
African dance by The Chuck Davis Dance Company quite literally brings in the
African village set for the subsequent parody of the post-Roots commodification of
African-ness.Yet another example can be seen in the special that spawned the series,
where a bevy of beautiful black women, of varying hues, in a production number
that crosses June Taylor with Alvin Ailey, celebrates black beauty to the sound of
smooth jazz and each woman reciting the passage from Langston Hughes’s “Harlem
Sweeties” that describes her.While one might argue that the passage objectified the
women, in a pageantlike manner, the assertion of non-Eurocentric beauty on prime
time was, indeed, a rarity.
98. The day before the prize was presented to Pryor, in a lecture at the Kennedy Center
the American Studies scholar Shelly Fisher Fishkin, who specializes in Twain, stated
that the comic and the author “shared several essential elements: they use humor to
point out the absurdities of the ruling class, they made their marks by recounting
anecdotes from their lives rather than by telling jokes and they derive much of their
style from African forms of storytelling.” During the ceremony honoring the first
Twain honoree another viewpoint was given when Chris Rock quipped, regarding
a fictitious meeting between Twain and Pryor, “Richard would’ve said, ‘I enjoy your
work’ and Twain would’ve said, ‘Nigger, get my bag’ (Kevin Carter, “As Groundbreaking Comedian Richard Pryor’s Health Declines, His Stature Grows,” Knight
Ridder Newspapers/Star News, Jan. 15, 1999, Arts sec., 1).
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99. Carter, “As Groundbreaking,” 1.
100. Nelson George, “The Rumors of His Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” New
York Times, Jan. 17, 1999, A2.
101. Interestingly, in the latter the slyness of Gregory’s humor also makes a cameo: the
character takes great pleasure in challenging the Blackness of Reno’s only male
African American officer, Deputy S. Jones (Cedric Yarbrough), and in complimenting the only black female officer, Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash).
102. Mark Reid, Redefining Black Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),
26.
103. Ibid.
104. Ibid., 19.
105. The same might be said of his portrayal of the down-and-out private eye in Hickey
and Boggs (1972).Teamed with ex-I-Spy partner, Robert Culp, Cosby is not playing
Alexander Scott here: Hickey is a contemporary, proud—and sometimes confrontational—Black Man. Although the film was neither a critical nor a commercial success, as Elvis Mitchell aptly describes: “Mr. Cosby’s performance achieved a more
fully realized brand of ghetto debonair” (Mitchell, “So Cool,” E1).
106. Interestingly, when Cosby and Pryor next shared the screen, it would be in Neil
Simon’s California Suite (1978)—the duo play Chicago doctors on the vacation from
hell.
107. Even Cosby, the cowriter and producer of Leonard, panned the film.
108. The issue of de facto prohibition on the Black comic leading man in mainstream
comedy will be explored in more detail in the discussions of Murphy, Rock, and
Chappelle.
109. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1993), 122–23.
110. This term, which refers to the adoption of any vestige of the racist stereotypes of the
minstrel show into the popular entertainments that followed the genre’s timely
demise, is derived from perhaps the most patently offensive minstrel archetype: the
“coon.” As Donald Bogle notes, the coon was “the most blatantly degrading of all
black stereotypes. The pure coons emerged as no-account niggers, those unreliable,
crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more than eating watermelons,
stealing chickens, shooting crap, or butchering the English language” (Bogle, Toms,
Coons, 8).
112. Pryor contended that his firing of then Indigo president, former athlete/actor/activist
Jim Brown (over creative differences on which projects should receive the green
light) in 1983, had significant consequences for him:“The black film community was
outraged.The NAACP turned on me” (Pryor, Convictions, 210).
113. Vincent Canby, “Screen: ‘Jo Jo Dancer,’” New York Times, May 2, 1986, C9.
114. Rob Salem,“Pryor Conjures Up Ghosts, Comic Tries to Put Misspent Life into Perspective,” Toronto Star, May 7, 1986, B1.
115. Canby, “Screen: ‘Jo Jo Dancer,’” C9.
116. Paul Attanasio, “Jo Jo Dancer, Pryor’s Tale,” Washington Post, May 4, 1986, D1.
Chapte r 2. M urphy and Rock
1. The omission of Flip Wilson in this cavalcade of comic stars is rather telling in terms
of how Wilson is viewed by black comics of the post-soul era. One might surmise
that his contribution is minimized, to some extent, because of the Anglo-friendliness
of both his persona and the content of his humor during the height of his popularity,
which coincides with the zenith of the Black Power movement in the late sixties
and early seventies.
2. The film begins with a sketch that establishes Murphy as one who has always
rebelled against middle-class mores—as an eight-year-old telling a risqué kid joke
252
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
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(with bodily functions as the punch line) to a stunned audience consisting of his
family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner.
By 1987 Murphy could “open” a movie, something that only a handful of black
actors before or since have been able to do. Along with that power—fueled by box
office success—came the elevation of Murphy as the founding member of the
“Black Pack,” a term he coined at the press conference for Beverly Hills Cop II.
Between the late eighties and early nineties Murphy and his “pack”—which
included Robert Townsend (Hollywood Shuffle, 1987), Arsenio Hall (The Arsenio Hall
Show, 1989–94), and Keenen Ivory Wayans (the future creator/producer of In Living
Color, 1990–94)—were seen as the new wave of black comedy.
bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 112.
Donald Bogle, Blacks in American Film and Television:An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1988), 230.
Stephen Holden, “Comedy’s Bad Boys Screech into the Spotlight,” New York Times,
Feb. 28, 1988, Arts and Leisure, sec. 2, p. 1. Holden regards Murphy’s comedy as the
accompaniment to an age when “as the political climate turned more conservative
and materialistic, hip irreverence turned sour, and the wink in the eye of comedy
became a sneer.”
Michael Sragow, “Eddie: What Happened?” Salon, Aug. 3, 2000),
http://dir.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/08/03/eddie_murphy/index.html?pn=1
(accessed April 3, 2006).
Ken Tucker, review of Chris Rock: Big Ass Jokes, directed by Chris Rock, Entertainment Weekly, June 14, 1994, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/tv
/0,6115,302712_3_0_,00.html (accessed May 3, 2004).
“White people say they’d vote for him because they think it’s the cool thing to say
. . . ‘Sure, I’ll vote for him’ (punctuated with a dismissive ‘yeah, right’ chuckle).”
Malcolm X, “A Message to the Grassroots,” quoted in Acham, Revolution Televised,
179.
Acham, Revolution Televised, 180.
Ibid., 182.
In Bring the Pain Rock’s commentary on the O. J. Simpson case includes the discussion of alimony, Nicole Simpson’s relationship to Ron Goldman, and the statement,
“I’m not saying he should have killed her, but I understand,” delivered with broad
smile and a wink to the audience.
In fairness, Rock also takes to task the young fathers—“niggas [who] always want
some credit for some shit they are supposed to do . . . [he says] ‘I take care of my
kids’ . . . you’re supposed to do that, you dumb motherfucker.”
According to U.S. Census data from March of 2002, less than 25 percent of American families have single incomes, and less than 30 percent of families have a stay-athome mom. United States Census Bureau, “Table FG1. Married Couple Family
Groups, by Labor Force Status of Both Spouses, and Race and Hispanic Origin of
the Reference Person: March 2002,” June 11, 2003, http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2002/tabFG1-all.pdf (accessed Aug. 1, 2003).
Watkins, On the Real Side, 581.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folks: Essays and Sketches, 3rd ed. (Chicago: A. C.
McClurg, 1903), 615.
Chris Rock, interview by Ed Bradley, 60 Minutes, CBS, Feb. 17, 2005.
For another aspect of premium cable outlet’s African American–oriented programming see Christina Acham’s analysis of HBO films and their representation of the
historical black experience—from The Tuskegee Airmen to Miss Evers’ Boys.
Renee Marcus, “Life in the Pop Lane; Mourning Late Night’s Best Show,” Boston
Globe, Nov. 28, 2000, C1.
Dennis Miller Live (1994–2002) followed The Chris Rock Show on Fridays at midnight. Like Rock, SNL alum Miller was known for biting, heavily referenced politi-
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22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
253
cal and social commentary—and for his comedy’s fluid position on the political
spectrum.
In fairness, one must note that by the late nineties black comedy, in general, had
begun to address social and political issues more directly. While Hall’s persona was
rooted in his “likability,” which translates into being a nonthreatening figure for
mainstream audiences—celebratory rather than critical—Rock’s “equal-opportunity
offender” persona is defined by confrontation, challenging rather than assuaging
audience sensibilities.
Michael Griffith, a twenty-three-year-old African American, and two of his black
friends, Cedric Sandiford and Timothy Grimes, had their car break down near a local
pizza parlor in Howard Beach (Queens, New York). A group of white men spotted
and harassed Griffith and his friends, yelling,“There’s niggers at the pizza parlor. Let’s
get them” before beating them with baseball bats and tree limbs. Sandiford was
knocked unconscious and Griffith was severely beaten, only Grimes escaped
unharmed because he pulled a knife on his attackers. Griffith was fleeing from the
attackers when he was struck by a car and killed.The Howard Beach incident set off
a wave of protests and racial tensions in New York. The incident also acted as the
inspiration for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989).
Acham, Revolution Televised, 188.The conclusion provides a thoughtful and thorough
textual analysis of this sketch and several others from The Chris Rock Show.
Robert Bianco and Gary Levin, “Spike Prefers a World without Fox’s ‘PJs,’” USA
Today, Jan. 18, 1999, D3.
Denene Millner,“This Isn’t Comedy, It’s Mockery—Ignorant and Deeply Unfunny,”
New York Daily News, Jan. 19, 1999, 28.
Howard Rosenberg,“The PJs: Equal Opportunity Satire; Much like Animated Spoof
Series before It,This Spin on an African American Family Is Irreverent and Endearing,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 9, 1999, F1.
Ibid.
Like the “Supa’s” name, there are multiple plays on black popular culture knowledge:
the Hilton Jacobs projects are named after Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, the young black
actor who played Freddy “Boom-Boom”Washington in the seventies sitcom Welcome
Back, Kotter.
Neal, Soul Babies, 124.
Less than two years after his purported “good Samaritan” moment of giving a
woman a ride home (picking up a transgendered prostitute, “Shalomar” Seluli, with
outstanding warrants, on a Los Angeles boulevard known for male prostitution),
Murphy was decidedly press shy. Despite his $5 million suit against the National
Enquirer for its story on Murphy’s alleged “secret life,” the fact that the comic, whose
stand-up monologues were repeatedly labeled as homophobic, was virtually
“queered” might also explain in part why those among his faithful fan base, particularly his African American following, were not as outspoken in their defense of the
comic.
Josh Wolk, “Chris Rock on Fire,” Entertainment Weekly, March 19, 2004, 22.
Ibid.
Josh Wolk, “School of Rock,” Entertainment Weekly, Feb. 4, 2005, 32.
Dyson, Open Mike, 258.
Ibid.
That distinction, one with which many of my students still struggle, Rock himself
made when discussing African American spectatorship of black films with Spike Lee
on his HBO late-night series.As Lee extolled the virtues of one particular film (John
Singleton’s Rosewood), Rock remarked that the “film was positive but that doesn’t
mean it was good.”
Neil Strauss, “Confessions of Chris Rock,” Rolling Stone, April 7, 2004, 64.
Ibid.
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40. The act itself differed slightly from the set I had seen at Detroit’s State Theater a few
months earlier, but so did the audience. As comic Mario Joyner, Rock’s opening act
and former cast member on The Chris Rock Show, noted as he scanned the Detroit
audience, “I see a lot of ambition, but I don’t see a lot of black.” While the act did
differ slightly—with less of a focus on overtly political humor and more on sexual
politics and jokes about “rims,” it would be incorrect to assert that Rock made the
act “Anglo-friendlier.” Rather, he used the material that worked—broader, and less
critical race- and sex-based, humor.
41. Skeet is slang for ejaculating on one’s partner.
42. Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five’s 1982 song “The Message” is considered
the rap song to politicize the genre in its discussion about the realities of ghetto life.
43. This is in reference to the Bill Murray film with the central premise of one day
being repeated ad infinitum until the central protagonist learns his lesson.
44. Fox already had Malcolm in the Middle, The Bernie Mac Show, and Arrested Development.
45. At a 2005 gathering of television critics, when asked about whether he intends to
remain active in the series, Rock replied, “I’ve been working a while. I don’t think
I’ve ever done anything and walked out. I don’t think there’s any evidence of that.
My name is Rock, not Chappelle” (Maria Elena Fernandez, “Rock Will Stand by
New Show,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2005, E2).
46. Paul Brownfield, “Finding the Humor in a Tough Situation,” Los Angeles Times, Sep.
22, 2005, E8. Rock would have been thirteen in 1979 rather than in 1982, and the
series’ nuclear family of five is only half as large as the comic’s actual family.
47. Fernandez, “Rock Will Stand by New Show,” E2.
48. Chuck Crisafulli, “Q & A with Chris Rock,” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1996, F1.
49. Nathan Rabin, “Chris Rock,” The Onion AV Club, Nov. 17, 2004,
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/23281 (accessed April 3, 2006).
Chapte r 3. Po st-Soul Come dy Goe s to the Movie s
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 126.
Ibid., 128.
Bogle, Blacks in American Film and Television, 18.
Guerrero, Framing Blackness, 132.
Intriguingly, some aspects of Murphy’s stand-up act that had generated so much ire
were excused within the context of a “guy” film.The misogyny that informed much
of the material about women in Raw also found its way into BHCII—as exemplified by the repeated “it’s a dick thing” ethos in the marital advice Foley offers to Taggart (a slightly sanitized version of Murphy’s “Cumin’ Hard” routine) and by Brigitte
Nielsen’s character, referred to simply as “the big bitch,” whose shooting acts as a
collective reassertion of masculine solidarity.
Rock’s supporting role as Lee Butters in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), although not
strictly an example of the fish-out-of-water film, offers a variation on how the black
comedian can be utilized within the action comedy. While his role acts as a sort of
narrative garnish to the already established interracial buddy paradigm, the character of Butters is constructed as a college-educated black detective who acts as an
alternative to Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover), the old-school
“cops who don’t play by the rules.” Cast as the “kid” with the veteran partners,
Rock’s role is a fairly thankless one, yet he still exhibits low dosage glimmerings of
the comic’s stand-up persona.
Gene Seymour, “‘Bad Company’ Isn’t Good for Rock,” Los Angeles Times, June 7,
2002, F2.
Elvis Mitchell,“Yes, He Looks like His Brother, but Does He Listen to Mozart,” New
York Times, July 28, 2000, E18.
In another independent film, Neil LaBute’s Nurse Betty (2000), Rock’s turn as the
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
255
sardonic hit man provides another example of a choice of role that—in terms of
character voice, if not character construction—also exemplifies continuity between
comic and screen persona. Even Rock’s foray into the animated world is a bit edgier.
In the title role of the Farrelly brothers’ Osmosis Jones, he costars with a live-action
Bill Murray in what can only be described as a conflation of standard animated
heroism and live-action gross-out humor.
Elvis Mitchell, “So Cool,” Aug. 4, 2002, E1.
In all likelihood, however, Murphy will dip into the generic well of action comedy
again—Beverly Hills Cop IV is in the works as of this writing, scripted by Jason
Richman, one of the writers of the Bruckheimer/Schumacher film Bad Company.
Richman is also penning the third installment of the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker Rush
Hour franchise.
David Germain, “‘X2’ Proves That It Still Has the Power to Attract; ‘Daddy Day
Care,’ a Family Comedy Starring Eddie Murphy, Lands in the No. 2 Spot,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2003, E2.
The fact that Ice Cube, the veteran of the gangsta rappers par excellence, N.W. A, is
now playing the role of father (or father in training) in lighthearted urban-suburban
comedies like the Barbershop series or Are We There Yet? (2005), reflects not only a
change in the rapper/actor/director’s persona but also a different climate for blackoriented film. All of the aforementioned films experienced box office success. The
circuitous path of Cedric the Entertainer’s comic persona will be examined in future
work focusing specifically on “The Original Kings and Queens of Comedy.”
In 1983 Buchwald’s story idea “King for a Day,” in which an African potentate was
deposed while on a trip to the United States, was originally optioned by Paramount
as a vehicle to be reworked into a romantic comedy for Murphy.The comic claimed
to have never seen the Buchwald treatment. In 1988 Murphy and movie producer
Alain Bernheim waged a costly legal battle against Paramount Studios ($2.5 million)
on charges that the studio denied them credit for, and profits from, the story on
which Coming to America was based: in the end they were awarded $900,000. The
film grossed $289 million worldwide.
David Ansen, “That Old Softie, Eddie Murphy,” Newsweek, July 4, 1988, 58.
As early as 1987 the Black Pack creative community’s collective efforts were making their way to the big screen—as exemplified in Murphy’s Raw, to which Wayans
and Townsend lent their writing talents and which Townsend directed.
Walter Leavy, “Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx:Three Generations of
Black Comedy,” Ebony, Jan. 1990, 103.
Although far more affectionate, the verbal sparring between Benne and Vera is a
touch reminiscent of the battles between Fred Sanford and Aunt Esther (veteran
comic LaWanda Page) on the seventies sitcom Sanford and Son.
Hal Hinson, “Harlem Nights,” Washington Post, Nov. 17, 1989, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/harlemnights.htm (accessed
March 16, 2004).
“Murphy and Others Lend a Hand in Getting Film Made,” Sentinel, Feb. 25, 1993,
B4.
Having initially viewed this film long before I began this area of study (and before
falling in love with hip-hop), I remember thinking that the film was simply not as
funny as I had expected it to be. I’d seen Rock on Uptown Comedy Express, on SNL,
and even caught one or two of the eight episodes of In Living Color that he had
done, and I was well aware of Nelson George’s work as a music critic, who was an
expert on the musical genre. Screening the film again, however, after myriad hours
of hip-hop studies, I realized that there was much in the film that I simply did not
get the first time around.
Another minor character, Eve, the reporter from the Source, puts Albert/Gusto in his
place after he makes suggestive remarks and, when rebuffed, calls her a “groupie with
256
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
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a pen.” She states that she can write a “a puff piece” or an in-depth exposé that
revealed the real nature of CB4: “Which would you prefer, Albert?” Although she is
associated with Euripides/Dead Mike, after this sequence, Eve, as an intellectual
black woman, is reduced to a fundamentally lineless existence.
Hal Hinson, “CB4,” Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/style/longterm/movies/videos/cb4rhinson_a0a7fd.htm.
In the mid-eighties the Parent Music Resource Center, whose bipartisan leadership
included Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, crusaded against “the growing trend in music
towards lyrics that are sexually explicit, excessively violent, or glorify the use of
drugs and alcohol.” Arguably, their pressure on the Recording Industry Association
of America, which eventually facilitated the “voluntary” record rating system, and
their publishing of a list of the “Filthy Fifteen,” which included songs from
Madonna, Prince, and the Mary Jane Girls, as well as Judas Priest and AC/DC, provided a de facto branding system for young music consumers in the eighties and
beyond.
The song parodies Kool G. Rap and D. J. Polo’s “Talk like Sex.”
Big Ass Jokes, the half-hour HBO special, which marked Rock’s ascension into the
higher echelon of stand-up comedy, premiered in 1993 (the same year as CB4), providing an inkling of the stand-up phenomenon that Rock would become.
Tyler and Gerard, respectively, as Marcus’s trusted, comical, and socially inferior
comrades in arms, serve as the bifurcation of the Tony Randall roles in Pillow Talk
(1959) and Lover Come Back (1961).
Interestingly, Martin Lawrence’s Tyler lacks any of the quasi-“playa-ness,” which will
later be mobilized in both his television program and his film roles. For Gerard,
David Allen Grier’s “countrified” (read lower-class, rural, black) buddy, his sensitivity—whether about his parents’ behavior, which is neither urban nor urbane, or his
desire for a monogamous, caring relationship—is a continual source for mockery.
The film’s gross of $131 million was more than respectable.
Earl Calloway, “Boomerang Starring Eddie Murphy, Ecstatic with Humor,” New
Philadelphia Courier, July 22, 1992, B1.
Janet Maslin,“The Tables Are Turned on a Smug, Sweet Talking Don Juan,” New York
Times, July 1, 1992, C18.
Calloway, “Boomerang Starring Eddie Murphy,” B1.
Peter Travers, review of Boomerang, directed by Reginald Hudlin, Rolling Stone, Aug.
6, 1992, http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/_/id/5949193 (accessed
Dec. 6, 2004).
Kay Bourne, “Murphy Gets the Tables Turned in Fast Paced Boomerang,” Bay State
Banner, July 16, 1992, 14.
At just over $64 million in domestic and foreign box office, Down to Earth was Paramount’s seventh-highest grossing film in 2001.
Kenneth Turan, “This Time ‘Earth’ Can Wait,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2001, Calendar sec., 1.
Elvis Mitchell,“Down to Earth: He May Be in Heaven but He’s Dying at the Apollo,”
New York Times, Feb. 16, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/16/arts/
16DOWN.html (accessed June 20, 2001).
On February 16, 2001, I was seated in a large theater in the local Cineplex with a
crowd that was decidedly more integrated than it had been the previous summer
when I saw the black comedian concert film The Original Kings of Comedy (Spike
Lee, 2000) in the same venue. Although I did not have the opportunity to ask the
young African American male what he meant, his comment seemed to speak to the
“blanding” that the Times reviewers on both coasts address.
Manohla Dargis, “Chris Rocks, but Not as a Director; ‘Head of State’ Lacks Character Development and Great Camera Shots but the Leading Man Is an Expert at
Searing, Topical Humor,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2000, E14.
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257
40. Ibid.
41. A. O. Scott, “Black Presidential Candidate Is Chosen so He Will Lose,” New York
Times, March 28, 2003, E16.
42. Character actor Nick Searcy plays Lewis as a cross between LBJ and George W. Bush.
43. Chris Rock, Rock This (New York: Hyperion, 1997), 224.
44. Manohla Dargis, “A Remake Files Down the Sharp Edges of a Prison Football
Saga,” New York Times, May 27, 2005, E1. Dargis further notes that “like the hip-hop
heavy soundtrack these speaking roles [and the increased black presence in the film]
are a mere calculation, a crude ploy to lure in black audiences and to make white
audiences feel cool by proxy.”
45. Wolk, “School of Rock,” 32.
46. The audience for the Grammys was down 28 percent (18.8 million), and that for
the Oscar precursor, the Golden Globes, was down by a startling 40 percent (16.8
million). Even with the 5 percent ratings slip, the Rock-hosted ceremony pulled
41.5 million viewers, more than the Grammys and Globes of the same year combined. See Scott Collins, “Oscar Viewers Down,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 2005,
C1.
47. This assessment is based on the fact that each of the Best Picture nominations
grossed less than $100 million domestically (before the March telecast), which,
according to industrial conventional wisdom, is the marker of a “hit.”
48. Lola Ogannaike, “This Oscar Host Is Willing to Call It as He Sees It,” New York
Times, January 2, 2005, E7.
49. Gil Cates, interview on CNN Live, CNN, Feb. 26, 2005.
50. Ogannaike, “This Oscar Host Is Willing,” E7.
51. The “wardrobe malfunction” refers to the most TiVoed moment in television
history. During the 2004 Super Bowl halftime, in a choreographed move, Justin
Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson’s bustier “accidentally” revealing more than had
been “intended.”This “incident” spawned extensive discussions of “decency” on television in the press, the pulpit, and from the FCC. CBS was fined $550,000 by the
FCC, Jackson’s domestic sales on her new album sagged, and Timberlake emerged
unscathed.The second, also football-related, controversy was a Monday night teaser,
where Nicolette Sheridan, playing her Desperate Housewives character, Edie Britt, and
clad only in a towel, seduces Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens; the
encounter ends in an embrace by the purportedly naked (shot from behind from the
waist up) actress and the wide receiver. Despite complaints about the skit from Black
NFL coaches like Tony Dungy to family-friendly media watchdogs, ABC was not
penalized—although all those involved in the controversial segment of the skit apologized for “going too far.”
52. Frank Rich,“Hollywood Bets on Chris Rock’s ‘Indecency,’” New York Times, Feb. 27,
2005, Arts sec., 27.
53. In “Chris Rock:The William F-ing Buckley of Stand-up,” John Swansberg of Slate,
the online magazine, asserted that both Drudge and Rock wanted the public to
believe the rhetoric of “dangerousness” around the comic acting as host when in
actuality, “Rock may speak in the irreverent language of blue comedy, but more
often than not, his ideas are red state red” (Feb. 25, 2005, http://slate.msn.com/
id/2113952/ [accessed March 5, 2005]).
54. Before presenting an award, Penn supplied an admittedly humorless retort, which
began with “Forgive my compromised sense of humor” and ended with Jude Law
“is one of our finest actors.”
55. Paul Brownfield, “New Tune but the Song’s the Same,” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 28,
2005, E1.
56. Ibid.
57. Chris Rock, interview by Oprah Winfrey, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC, Feb. 28,
2005.
258
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58. Alessandra Stanley, “If You Didn’t Watch It,You Still Get to See It,” New York Times,
Feb. 28, 2000, E1.
59. John Anderson, “Dangerous? Edgy? Chris Rock Calls Himself Mainstream,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 26, 2005, F1.
60. Jane Malanowski,“Not to Say This Is a Better Movie Than Beatty’s,” New York Times,
Feb. 11, 2001, Arts sec., 27.
61. Chris Rock, interview by Ed Bradley, 60 Minutes, CBS, Feb. 17, 2005. In the same
segment Rock further responded to Driver’s comments, challenging the writer to
“tell me one opportunity that was denied to you because I told a joke.” Interestingly,
almost a decade ago there was a mitigated controversy with Rock’s Vanity Fair cover
(August 1998), which depicted the comic in a circus milieu. Some bristled at what
could be seen as a minstrel-like quality to the way that Rock was depicted, dressed as
a clown (including baggy pants, red and white checkerboard shirt, red bowtie, black
and white spectators [shoes], and white gloves) and red cheeks and nose, clown white
on his lips and eyes.Although, one could also argue that his costuming and pose (arms
and legs akimbo sitting on top of a barrel), the accompanying headline,“Chris Rock
to Be Young, Gifted and the Funniest Man in America,” and Rock’s serious (perhaps,
incredulous) look into the camera, are knowingly at play with the minstrel tropes.
Chapte r 4. Cro ssove r Diva
1. Valerie Smith, Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings (New York:
Routledge, 1998), xiv.
2. See chapter 1 (000).
3. As a black woman, who is also “Bambi from Southern California,” I can understand,
on an empathetic level, the pleasure of defying expectations generated by one’s
name.
4. Robert Hurwitt, ed., West Coast Plays, no. 21–22, California Theatre Council, 1988.
5. Quoted in Enid Nemy,“Whoopi’s Ready, but Is Broadway?” New York Times, Oct. 21,
1984, E2.
6. Nemy, “Whoopi’s Ready,” E2.
7. Her first HBO Special was Whoopi Goldberg: Direct from Broadway (1985), a filmed
version of her one-woman Broadway show, with the monologues shot as individual
vignettes rather than as a theatrical performance.
8. The first swirl of controversy around the film ensued when white director Steven
Spielberg, known for his blockbusters (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Arc, et al.), was chosen to direct the film version of Alice Walker’s book, a decision questioned by many
in the black community.The second flurry came when, after receiving eleven Oscar
nominations, including Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Picture, The Color Purple was shut out completely, raising questions about whether a predominantly blackcast film could garner the industry’s highest award.
9. On February 13, 1984, the Washington Post reported that Jesse Jackson refers to Jews
as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown” in private conversations with journalists.
10. AIDS was first reported in the medical and popular press in 1981. In October of
1987 Reagan publicly spoke, for the first time, about the epidemic in a major policy address. By the beginning of January 1988, almost sixty thousand AIDS cases had
been reported and almost twenty-eight thousand of those diagnosed had died.
12. Quoted in Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and
the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 81.
13. This is not to say that this was the only cause in which Goldberg has been
involved—it is just her highest-profile activism, aside from Democratic presidential
campaigns.
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259
14. Darryl Gates was the controversial police chief of Los Angeles. His fourteen-year
tenure included both the Rodney King beating and the LA uprising following the
court case that acquitted the officer involved in the King beating. In July 1991, some
four months after the King beating, the Christopher Commission report was published.The commission, headed by attorney Warren Christopher (who later became
U.S. secretary of state), was created to conduct “a full and fair examination of the
structure and operation of the LAPD,” including its recruitment and training practices, internal disciplinary system, and citizen complaint system. The commission
found, among other things, that a significant number of officers in the LAPD repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written
guidelines of the department regarding force.
15. Kam Williams, “Whoopi Goldberg: The Kingdom Come Interview,” Washington
Informer, April 18, 2001, 21.
16. Smith, Not Just Race, xxiii.
17. Dorothy Gilliam, “The Puzzle of Pearl Bailey on Her Philosophy of Life,” Washington Post, Oct. 17, 1989, C2.
18. Watkins, On the Real Side, 392–93.
19. Elsie A. Williams, The Humor of Jackie “Moms” Mabley: An African American Comedy
Tradition (New York: Garland, 1995), 78, 76.
21. In 1969 Mabley even scored a top-forty hit with her heartfelt version of “Abraham,
Martin, and John.”
22. Williams, The Humor of Jackie “Moms” Mabley, 89.
23. Before the age of fifteen Mabley had been raped twice and forced into an arranged
marriage.
24. Williams, The Humor of Jackie “Moms” Mabley, 81.
25. In Engel v.Vitale the Supreme Court held that the idea of the state to mandate prayer
in schools was contrary to the First Amendment’s ban against the establishment of
religion.This case remains controversial in regard to the definition of what “freedom
of religion” means today.
26. Although Mabley did note that Lady Bird tried to let her in the back door, whereas
Caroline (JFK’s daughter) had always let her in the front.
27. Mabley died within a year of the film’s release in 1975.
28. Quoted in the Tri-State Defender,“Amazing Grace Opens . . .‘My Picture Different’:
Moms Mabley,” Aug. 10, 1974, 10.
29. I refer to the violence surrounding the desegregation of the Little Rock schools, as
a result of Brown v. Board of Education in 1955, and the similarly intense social
upheaval caused by school busing for purposes of integration in Boston in 1976.
30. Bogle, Toms, Coons, 329.
31. Ibid., 332.
32. Janet Maslin, “Goldberg on the Run Disguised as a Nun,” New York Times, May 29,
1992, C1.
33. Bogle, Toms, Coons, 332.
34. CBS Cable, “Pearl Bailey, Pt. 2,” Signature, Aug. 1982.
35. Liner Notes, Pearl Bailey Sings for Adults Only (Roulette Records, 1954).
36. Gilliam, “The Puzzle of Pearl Bailey,” C2.
37. Ibid.
38. It is interesting that Bailey’s advocacy was never seen as a liability, whereas Goldberg’s
became significantly less prized by the campaign she had so ardently supported.
39. CBS Cable, “Pearl Bailey, Pt. 2.”
40. Whoopi Goldberg, Book (New York: Avon, 1997), 123.
41. Neal Lester notes that the song “‘The Right to Love’ (1950s) was written for Lena
Horne and her white husband Lennie Hayton when they made their marriage
public after three years of keeping it secret. Here, the couple whose love is ‘wrong’
260
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
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and ‘shameful’ becomes ‘indifferent to the cold, unfriendly stares, / indifferent to the
whispered talk’” (Neal A. Lester, “Black/White Interracial Intimacies in Popular
Music,” Interracial Voice, Guest Editorial (2001), http://www.webcom.com/
~intvoice/lester.html (accessed April 6, 2006).
CBS Cable, “Pearl Bailey, Pt. 2.”
Jacqueline Genovese, “Whoopi Goldberg Again Reaching the Top: Up from Drugs
and Welfare, Black Actress Now Highest Paid Woman in Hollywood,” WE MBI, June
13, 1993, 10.
Ibid.
Bogle, Toms, Coons, 333.
Jay Carr, “Made in America: Don’t Buy It,” Boston Globe, May 28, 1993, E2.
Janet Maslin, “A Man, a Woman and a Sperm Bank Yield a 90s Romance,” New York
Times, May 28, 1993, C3.
Bogle, Toms, Coons, 334.
Yuseef Salaam, “Whoopi Goldberg’s Made in America, another Hollywood Hoax,”
New York Amsterdam News, June 5, 1993, 25.
Abiola Sinclair, “Whoopi and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” New York Amsterdam News,
June 12, 1993, 32. Sinclair also notes, in response to Salaam’s argument, that “not
once in any film produced by a Black male has a Black woman worn her hair in a
natural or in braids. Black women who were in braids are laughed at via Martin. . . .
When he [the black film producer] dreams, apparently he dreams of women with
long straight hair who can pass the paper bag test.”
Founded in 1904, the Friar’s Club is a fraternal organization whose members have
included scores of the biggest names in show business of the past century, from
Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan to Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Jerry Seinfeld,
and, of course,Whoopi Goldberg. Besides being involved in philanthropic activities,
the club is best known to the general public for the legions of comic/comic actors
in its membership (e.g., Billy Crystal, Drew Carey, and Bill Murray), as well as for its
uninhibited and notoriously harsh “roasts” of its celebrity members.
“Whoopi Goldberg Defends Actor Ted Danson’s Blackface,” Los Angeles Sentinel,
Oct. 14, 1993, A1.
“Whoopi Goldberg: No Slapstick Comedy,” New Pittsburg Courier, Oct. 20, 1993,A5.
Ibid.
Abiola Sinclair, “Ted and Whoopi Part Deux,” New York Amsterdam News, Oct. 16,
1993, 26.
“Whoopi Goldberg Defends Actor Ted Danson’s Blackface.”
Ibid.
hooks, Black Looks, 76.
Jawn Murray, “Talking Whoopi,” BVBuzz, March 21, 2005, AOL Black Voices,
http://bv.channel.aol.com/entmain/bvbuzz/20050321 (accessed March 21, 2005).
Marc Warren,“Whoopi Goldberg Receives the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize
for American Humor,” Afro American Red Star, Oct. 16, 2001, B4.
MSNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, January 14, 2005.
Quoted in Jeffrey Resner, “10 Questions for Whoopi Goldberg,” Time, Nov. 22,
2004, 8.
Williams, “Whoopi Goldberg,” 21.
Ibid..
Stephen Holden, “‘Kingdom Come,’ Off to the Cemetery with Laughter,Tears, and
Belches,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2001, 11.
Goldberg’s first foray into the sitcom world was the short-lived CBS show Baghdad
Café (1990), costarring Maureen Stapleton.
The acronym,WWF, for World Wrestling Federation, was changed to WWE (World
Wrestling Entertainment) in 2005 to avoid confusion with the other WWF, World
Wildlife Foundation.
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68. Charles Isherwood, “One Woman, Uh-Huh, but So Many Guises,” New York Times,
Nov. 18, 2004, E1.
69. Ibid.
Chapte r 5. Dave Chap pe l le
1. Lola Ogunnaike, “Nothing’s Out of Bounds for Dave Chappelle,” New York Times,
Feb. 18, 2004, E1.
2. Dave Chappelle, interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air, NPR, Sep. 2, 2004.
3. Ibid.
4 . Tricia Rose, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America
(Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1994), 21.
5. The animated series South Park, created by Chappelle’s Comedy Central brethren
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, often parlays in gross-out humor, as well as popular culture parody. Boondocks, however, Aaron MacGruder’s syndicated cartoon strip—
which chronicles the lives of prepubescent Black radical, Huey; his younger brother,
gangsta wannabe, Riley; and their grandfather, as they move from the city to the suburbs—engages in incredibly incisive cultural and political criticism.
6. And You Don’t Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop, directed by Richard Lowe and Dana Heinz
Perry,VH1, 2004.
7. Ogunnaike, “Nothing’s Out of Bounds.”
8. George, Hip Hop America, 94.
9. MTV News, “Fugees—Yes, Even Lauryn—Reunite for Dave Chappelle’s Block
Party,” Sep. 20, 2004, http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1491206/20040920/
fugees.jhtml (accessed Nov. 7, 2004).
10. The concert documentary, directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), was the object of a bidding war after its screening at the 2005 Toronto
Film Festival. The victor was Rogue Pictures, a subsidiary of Universal’s Focus Features, which released the film in 2006.
11. MTV News, “Fugees.”
12. MTV News, “Dave Chappelle: The Reason Grandmas Know Who Lil Jon Is,” June
6, 2004, http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1488068/20040601/lil_jon_1.jhtml
(accessed Nov. 8, 2004).
14. Beginning in the sixties, Cosby broke ground by taking that well-traveled comic’s
route: from spots on Jack Paar and Steve Allen to starring television roles on I-Spy,
The Bill Cosby Show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, to his most successful film work
to date, Uptown Saturday Night, to the status of “America’s Dad” on The Cosby Show
to Leonard Part 6 (proving that, for a multiplicity of reasons, the movement between
media is not always the easiest . . . even for a television icon).
15. When one looks at Chappelle’s role in You’ve Got Mail and Jamie Foxx’s in The Truth
about Cats and Dogs, the similarities are striking.
16. This appears to transpose the Black men of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments
(1930s–1970s) and the Tuskegee Airmen.
17. Ron Glass on Barney Miller, John Amos (briefly) on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and
Tim Reid on WKRP in Cincinnati exemplify the “integrated” workplace comedies
common in the seventies. One could also discuss The Flip Wilson Show as a venue for
Black comics in the seventies; however, for the most part Wilson’s variety series
served as a showcase for already established Black comics who had either achieved
varying levels of mainstream success, like Cosby and Pryor, or his older contemporaries, like Redd Foxx and Slappy White, who had yet to cross over in a medium
other than stand-up.
18. Anare V. Holmes, “Up Close and Personal with Dave Chappelle,” Indianapolis
Recorder, Apr. 20, 2001, A1.
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19. Here I am faced with a certain quandary in terms of this discussion. I consider
myself neither expert nor particularly enamored with many aspects of the Def
Comedy Jam personae.This sentiment is due in part to the fact that, during the original run of Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam on HBO (at a period in my life when
premium cable was still considered a luxury), I had watched barely a dozen episodes
of the series. I also found the borderline misogyny of the gender politics in many of
the acts that I had seen to work in unlikely tandem with the “family values” rhetoric of those days. Both aspects of the series seemed to operate as (disparate) fronts
on the assault on feminism.
20. Rudy Ray Moore, the X-rated comedian who delivers his raunchy rhymes to jazz
and R&B accompaniment, has had an influence on both Black comics and rappers.
While non-Black audiences were not aware of Moore until the resurgence of interest in blaxploitation in the early nineties, Moore had a loyal cult following in the
Black community. Moore’s recordings were for Black audiences in the seventies
what Redd Foxx’s “party records” (adult-oriented, sexually explicit comedic fare)
were in the fifties and sixties.“Dolemite” has influenced hip-hop artists ranging from
2 Live Crew to Ice-T to Big Daddy Kane (who featured Moore on his 1990 “Big
Daddy vs. Dolemite”). From his first “party record,” Eat Out More (1970), to the cinematic embodiment of Moore’s alter ego, “Dolemite,” the super stud pimp daddy
(based on a raunchy version of a “toast,” of rhyming tall tales of one-upmanship) in
the self-produced blaxploitation cult classic, the self proclaimed “Godfather of Rap”
carved out a comedic niche but took a much more shocking approach to his comedy by filling his act with profanity and sex, as well as his “toasts.” Along with his
“colorful” characters (pimps, players, hustlers, and prostitutes), Moore produced
decidedly “blue” versions of toasts, folklore, and Black narrative traditions that had
dominated African American street culture since the early twentieth century, like his
iteration of the trickster tale “Signifying Monkey.”
21. Alexander starred with Eddie Given in arguably the most odious examples of televisual minstrelsy, Homeboys from Outer Space.
22. Kristal Brent Zook, Color by Fox:The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 105.
23. A. J. Jacobs, “Black to the Future,” Entertainment Weekly, June 14, 1996,
http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,292941_7_0_,00.html (accessed Aug. 5,
2003).
24. The 2006 merger between UPN and the WB began a new chapter in netlet history.
While the CW (C for CBS, UPN’s parent company, and W for Warner) came
together in hopes of following Fox’s path into network status, it retains vestiges of
both the teen and “urban” niches—arguably more of the former than the latter. In
the fall of 2006 the CW will still have black shows, most of which will be part of
the netlet’s Monday “black block” of comedy: with family fare like Everybody Hates
Chris, the sitcom standout of the class of 2006, based on the adolescence of Chris
Rock; All of Us, the Will Smith–produced blended family sitcom; and the single-folk
sitcoms Girlfriends, the UPN six-season veteran, and its spin-off, The Game, both
products of Kelsey Grammer’s production company.
25. Jacksonville Free Press, “Comedian Chappelle Accuses Fox of Racism for Show
Fumble,” July 15, 1998, 13.
26. Cho details this experience in her first concert film, I’m the One That I Want (2000).
27. MTV News, “Dave Chappelle: The Reason Grandmas Know Who Lil Jon Is.”
28. Dave Chappelle, interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air.
29. Allison Hope Weiner, “Funny Business,” Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 20, 2004,
http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,681698_3_0_,00.html (accessed Aug. 21,
2004).
30. Kam Williams, “Outrageous Comic Calls His Show a Hip Hop Masterpiece
Theater,” Recorder, Jan. 17, 2003, sec. C.
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31. Ibid.
32. This is Chris Rock’s reassurance to white audience members in his Bigger and
Blacker.
33. An interesting reversal of this notion is used on the second season of Chappelle’s Show
with a game-show parody, done with actual New Yorkers off the street, called “I
Know Black People.”
34. On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo was killed in the entrance hall of his Bronx
apartment building when undercover officers, who said they mistook his wallet for
a gun, fired forty-one shots, hitting the street vendor from Guinea nineteen times
and making the killing an international symbol of police brutality. See “USA:
Amnesty International Calls for Review of New York City Police Shooting Tactics,”
March 3, 2000, http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/usa/ document.do?id=
76035D7F4FBED5958025689A00477247 (accessed Nov. 7, 2004).
35. One must also note that this show was taped in 2000. In this pre-9/11 context it was
all right to criticize the NYPD and police in general. Even the comedic climate has
changed a bit on that front with some comics, black and white, defending the practice of racial profiling for the sake of “national security.”
36. Unlike the payoff of the archetypal Def Jam joke, there was a bit of an edge embedded in the shtick with the statement about the impact and anger over social services
being cut during the early Bush years.
37. In Passenger 57 an ex-cop, played by Wesley Snipes, gives a signal (that may have been
a thumbs-up) to other passengers when he is ready to make his move against the
hijackers.
38. This bit also features an impersonation of a slightly naughty Ed Bradley asking
Katherine Wylie if Clinton “was aroused” during their alleged encounter, which in
turn gives way to a rather predictable series of masturbation jokes.
39. The props he gives to San Francisco—“they are a savvy” audience—clearly seems a
commentary on the other California city, Sacramento, where stupid, not savvy, was
the word he used to describe the crowd.
40. Dave Chappelle, interview by Jay Leno, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC, Aug.
30, 2004.
41. I refer to the decision made during the Reagan years to have ketchup count as “vegetable” for the federally subsidized school lunch programs designed to serve the
nutritional needs of underprivileged children in American public schools.
42. I refer to the differing responses that the black and white communities have to the
not guilty verdict in the O. J. Simpson trial: voicing a black Simpson supporter’s
response to white outrage, Chappelle exclaims, “It burns don’t it. . . . That justice
system burns.Welcome to our world.”
43. Among other things, this can be used to describe sexual play with urine. Kelly is accused
of relieving himself on a fifteen-year-old girl as a part of their sexual encounter.
44. Quoted in Hillary Atkins, “Chappelle’s Show,” Television Week, May 31, 2004, 36.
45. Neal Brennan and Dave Chappelle, interview by Charlie Rose, The Charlie Rose
Show, PBS, April 28, 2004.
46. Weiner, “Funny Business.”
Show.
48. Tom Shales,“The New Season: Pryor’s Angry Humor:The Savagery of ‘Soap,’” Washington Post, Sep. 13, 1977, sec. B.
49. Mo’ Funny: Black Comedy in America, written and directed by Yvonne Smith, HBO
Films, 1993.
50. Kristal Brent Zook, “The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television,” in
Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 522.
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52. Norma Miriam Schulman, “Laughing across the Color Barrier: In Living Color,” in
Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 439.
53. The absurdity of this statement is a direct response to the premature exit of David
Edwards on The Real World LA. Edwards, with whom Chappelle grew up, was the
first cast member to be kicked out of the house. On the DVD commentary Chappelle remembers (with what seems like a trace of anger) his response when the same
phrase was used when David was asked to leave: “Don’t feel safe . . . the guy weighs
maybe a buck-twenty. It was ridiculous.”
54. Lerone Bennett Jr., Ebony’s executive editor, interview by Tavis Smiley, The Tavis
Smiley Show, PBS, June 18, 2003.
56. This is the case in the “Intervention” sketch when the white liberal couple, who
took in Tyrone so he could improve his life by becoming a real estate agent, describe
how, when they were away, he sold their house and had a “Tyrone $450,000 Crack
Party” with the proceeds. Outlandish? Yes. Sympathetic to crackheads? No.
57. Dave Chappelle, interview by Bob Simon, 60 Minutes, CBS, Oct. 20, 2004.
58. Todd Boyd, Am I Black Enough for You? Popular Culture from the ’Hood and Beyond
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 31.
59. Dave Chappelle, interview by Bob Simon, 60 Minutes.
Show.
61. Ibid.
62. Dave Chappelle, interview by Terry Gross, Fresh Air.
63. Neal Brennan and Dave Chappelle, interview by Bob Simon, 60 Minutes.
64. The story of his grandfather as inspiration for Clayton Bigsby is drawn from the
director’s commentary on episode 1 of the Chappelle’s Show Season 1 DVD, 2003.
65. Ibid.
66. According to their DVD commentary, the black friend in question was Say Adams,
African American, feminist, vegetarian artist, who did cover art for some of Def Jam’s
biggest artists—“a bright, sharp, cutting edge dude.” According to Brennan the
sketch made Adams feel the same way he had felt when Adam Horowitz (Ad-Rock
of the Beastie Boys) said the N word at the Apollo—the implication being that it
just felt wrong.
67. The head of one supporter, played by Neal Brennan, explodes, splattering blood and
flesh all over the predominantly white book covers of the Bigsby-authored volumes.
68. Hazel V. Carby, “The Multicultural Wars,” in Black Popular Culture, ed. Michele
Wallace and Gina Dent (Seattle: Bay Press, 1992), 193.
69. Boyd, Black Enough, 30.
70. Chappelle fielded questions on the “Niggar” sketch on NPR (Fresh Air), PBS
(Charlie Rose), and CBS (60 Minutes).
71. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from
Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 2.
72. Quoted in Christopher John Farley, “Dave Speaks,” Time, May 23, 2005, 68.
73. Devin Gordon, “Fears of a Clown,” Newsweek, May 16, 2005, 60.
74. Dave Chappelle, The Oprah Winfrey Show, directed by Joseph C. Terry, Feb. 3, 2006.
75. Chappelle, a Muslim since 1998, attempted to make a hajj, the required pilgrimage
to Mecca, but did not have the required visa to enter Saudi Arabia.
76. Chappelle, The Oprah Winfrey Show.
77. Quoted in Farley, “Dave Speaks.”
78. Quoted in ibid.
79. Sun Wire Services, “End of Chappelle’s Show No Joke,” Ottawa Sun, Aug. 4, 2005,
26.
80. Quoted in Farley, “Dave Speaks.”
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82. Dave Chappelle, Inside the Actors Studio, Feb. 12, 2006.
83. Manohla Dargis, “A Comedian’s Ultimate Goal: Rock the Block,” New York Times,
March 3, 2006, E1.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Quoted in Simon Robinson, “On The Beach with Dave Chappelle,” Time.com
(Web exclusive), May 15, 2005, http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/
0,8599,1061415,00.html (accessed May 17, 2005).
88. Chappelle, Inside the Actors Studio.
89. This is a term often used for folks who listen to and embody the underground hiphop lifestyle.
90. Linda Hutcheon’s notion of postmodern parody states that “through a double
process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come
from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and
difference. . . . Parody is doubly coded in political terms: it both legitimizes and subverts that which it parodies” (Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism [New
York: Routledge, 1989], 93, 97). Jameson likens pastiche to parody as “the imitation
of a peculiar, unique or idiosyncratic style” but establishes it as “a neutral practice of
such mimicry, without any of parody’s ulterior motives” (Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism [Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1991], 17). As previously stated, neither definition seems completely applicable
to Chappelle’s Show.
91. I am currently writing an article comparing Block Party and Wattstax as celebrations
of black culture and, markers of its mainstream consumption.
92. Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., political activist and poet, is the son of Fred Hampton,
who was assassinated in an FBI COINTELPRO operation in Chicago on Dec. 4,
1969. The junior Hampton was a community organizer working with the National
People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement before being arrested on charges of aggravated arson during the LA uprising. Hampton was convicted and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. An international campaign to free Hampton was launched, and
on Sep. 14, 2001, he was released from prison. Hampton remains politically active
in a variety of ways, including touring the country with hip-hop artist Mutulu
Olugabala from the rap group Dead Prez.
93. Undoubtedly there are similarities between the ongoing legal woes of the “New
York Three” and “Mumia.” Jalil Abdul Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) and Albert
Nuh Washington were arrested in San Francisco in 1971 and Herman Bell in New
Orleans in 1973 for the killing of two New York City police officers in May 1971.
The first trial ended in a mistrial, but despite defense allegations that eyewitness testimony had been coerced in the second trial, the “New York Three” were convicted
and sentenced to life in prison. Each of the New York Three was named in COINTELPRO documents as members of the black liberation movement who had to be
“neutralized,” and each has served almost thirty years, with all appeals exhausted and
clemency or parole the only paths to release. Albert Nuh Washington died from liver
cancer in 2000; Jalil Abdul Muntaqim and Herman Bell continue to serve their life
sentences.
Only recently has the picture become less bleak for Mumia Abu-Jamal. From July
1982 until December 2001 Abu-Jamal had been on Pennsylvania’s death row for the
killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner. In December of 2001 the sentence of the
journalist, Black Panther, MOVE member, and outspoken critic of police brutality
and racism was commuted to life (although the conviction was upheld). During his
incarceration Abu-Jamal, who has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, has produced articles, radio commentaries (thru the Prison Radio Project and Democracy
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Now!), and several books, including Live from Death Row (1996) and We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (2004). With the status of cause célèbre, AbuJamal has attracted high-profile supporters such as filmmakers Spike Lee, John
Landis, and Oliver Stone; actors Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson, and Tim
Robbins; hip-hop artists The Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, and Rage Against the
Machine; and cultural critics/political activists Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Dick
Gregory, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In December 2005 the United States
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia, agreed to review the defense’s
claims of judicial bias (in relationship to jury selection and instruction, as well as the
exclusion of determination of fact and new evidence during both the trial and
appeal). As of the spring of 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal remains in prison.
E p i log ue
1. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press,“Two-in-Three Critical of Bush’s
Relief Efforts: Huge Racial Divide over Katrina and Its Consequences,” Pew Research
Center, Sep. 8, 2005, http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=255
(accessed Sep. 20, 2005).
2. “For Bush, the Storm after the Storm,” Time, Sep. 19, 2005, 45.
3. Marc Sandalow, “Katrina Thrusts Race and Poverty onto National Stage,” San Francisco Chronicle, Sep. 23, 2005, A13.
4. On National Public Radio’s This American Life, the September 9, 2005, program,
“After the Flood,” was dedicated to allowing those who endured Hurricane Katrina
and its aftermath to speak out. Denise Moore talked of her experiences in the Convention Center: from her anger with the authorities for lineups every four hours in
the blistering heat for buses that never came to her gratitude to some of the so-called
“looters” and those who in pre-Katrina life she would have labeled “gangsters” and
“thugs,” who acted as Robin Hoods, procuring water, juice, and diapers, etc., and
who “got together, figured out who had guns and decided they were going to make
sure that no women were getting raped because we did hear about women getting
raped in the superdome and that nobody was hurting babies. And nobody was hurting these old people.”
5. Clarence Page, “Obama Points to Danger of Passive Indifference,” Baltimore Sun,
Sep. 16, 2005, 15A.
6. Terry M. Neal, “Race, Class Re-Enter Politics after Katrina,” washingtonpost.com,
Sep. 22, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/
09/22/AR2005092200833.html?referrer=emailarticle (accessed Sep. 25, 2005).
7. West’s reference to the media’s construction of posthurricane looting was also
explored in countless blogs and in Aaron Kinney’s “‘Looting’ or ‘Finding,’”
Salon.com, Sep. 1, 2005, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/09/01/
photo_controversy/index.html (accessed Sep. 6, 2005). Kinney’s article details the
blog-driven controversy over two photographs (and captions) posted on Yahoo News,
both depicting individuals wading through chest-deep water and carrying food items
that came from a nearby grocery store. Dave Martin’s Associated Press photograph, in
which the person shown was a young black man, bore a caption that describes the
man’s actions as looting, while Chris Graythen’s photo for AFP/Getty Images, which
shows a white male and light-skinned woman in a similar activity, uses the term finding. As Kinney notes, for better or for worse, bloggers were “quick to raise allegations
about insensitivity and racism regarding the disparity of the two captions.”
8. Ed Gordon, “Now Is the Time for Us to Talk about Race,” Newsday Wire Services,
Passaic County (NJ) Herald News, Sep. 25, 2005, B7.
9. Ibid.
10. Morris Reid, interview with Brooke Anderson,“Rapper’s Comments on Race Fuel
Nationwide Debate,” Showbiz Show, CNN, Sep. 8, 2005. This segment also featured
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11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
267
a sound bite from Howard Dean’s commentary on racism and Katrina: “Skin color,
age and economics played a significant role in who survived and who did not.”
Bob Moon, “Houston, We May Have a Problem,” Marketplace, PRI, Sep. 5, 2005,
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/09/05/PM200509051.html
(accessed April 10, 2006).This segment captured the comments of Barbara Bush during a goodwill visit to the Astrodome.
Catherine R. Squires, “Rethinking the Black Public Sphere,” Communication Theory
(Nov. 2002): 458.
Ibid., 459.
Mo’Nique, with her starring role in UPN’s The Parkers (which ended its five-year
run as the highest-rated series with the African American audience), a starring role
in Hair Show (2004), an (almost) straight-to-video comedy, and supporting roles in
questionable comedic fare such as Three Strikes (2000) and Soul Plane (2003), has
been able to generate a screen presence that is (somewhat) akin to her stand-up
comic persona.
The Original Kings of Comedy (2000) was the Spike Lee–directed concert film that
brought the comic talents of Harvey, Hughley, Cedric, and Mac to the attention of
a wider (mainstream) audience, while the Showtime concert equivalent, The Queens
of Comedy (2001), solidified but did not expand the fan bases for Miss Laura Hayes,
Adele Givens, Sommore, and, the most industrially successful black female of this
court, Mo’Nique.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. Quintin Hoare
and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 3.
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Inde x
Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 236, 265–266n93
Academy Awards (TV show): 66th Annual
(1994), 128, 133, 145; 74th Annual
(2002), 128, 133; 77th Annual (2005),
126–129, 257nn46, 47
Adventures of Pluto Nash,The (Ron
Underwood, 2002), 120
Amos ’n’ Andy (TV series), 3, 43, 44, 62
Another You (Maurice Phillips, 1991), 64
Bad Company (Joel Schumacher, 2002),
101, 102, 255n11
Bagdad Café (TV series), 260n66
Bailey, Pearl, 11, 146, 147, 157–163,
259n38; crossover, celebrity, and
political action, 11, 160–163
Bell and Howell’s Close Up (TV show,
1961), 19
Beverly Hills Cop (Martin Brest, 1984),
70, 99–101
Beverly Hills Cop II (Tony Scott, 1987),
77, 100, 112, 254n5
Big Momma’s House (Raja Gosnell, 2000),
61, 119, 188
Bill Cosby: Himself (Bill Cosby, 1983),
29–31, 33, 96, 247n33
Bill Cosby on Prejudice (Bill Cosby, 1971),
27
Bill Cosby Show,The (TV series), 27–29
black cultural enclave, 242
Black Pack, 108, 186
Black Presidents, 23, 215–218
Blazing Saddles (Mel Brooks, 1974), 64
Blue Collar (Paul Schrader, 1978), 64
Blue Streak (Les Mayfield, 1999), 179,
183
Bogus (Norman Jewison, 1996), 132, 134
Book (Goldberg), 161–162
Boomerang (Reginald Hudlin, 1992), 112,
117–120
Bowfinger (Frank Oz, 1999), 105, 106
Boys on the Side (Herbert Ross, 1995),
132, 153
Brennan, Neil, 206, 207, 226, 227,
229–231
Buddies (TV series), 188
Bustin’ Loose (Oz Scott, 1981), 64
California Suite (Herbert Ross, 1978),
251
Car Wash (Michael Schultz, 1976), 63
CB4 (Tamra Davis, 1993), 109, 110,
112–117, 255–256n22
Chappelle, Dave, 178–236, 261, 262; de
facto crossover, 12, 179, 182, 183, 190,
205, 211; $50 million man, 228, 230,
234; flight to South Africa, 229–232,
234; GenX/Y fan base, 179; and hiphop, 180, 181; male-branded humor
of, 196; “mild” sexism of, 196, 197;
mocking hyper-masculinity, 218; as
post-soul baby, 178–180, 186; price of
crossover, 231; in Yellow Springs,
Ohio, 187, 179; in Washington, D.C.,
178, 179, 193
Chappelle’s Show (TV series), 181, 182,
190, 196, 198, 199, 205–219; “Black
Bush,” 23, 215–218; “Clayton Bigsby,”
222–224, 226, 234, 264n64; Comedy
Central conflicts with Chappelle,
228–230; controversy over mainstream
reception, 220; “dancing like there’s
269
270
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Index
Chappelle’s Show (continued)
nobody watching,” 180, 206, 232, 234;
“Donnell Rawlings,” 214, 216; end of
Chappelle’s Show, 229–232, 234; hiphop cultural specificity, 208–210,
217–219; insider humor, 205, 207,
210, 211, 217, 219; “The Niggar
Family,” 225, 226, 234; “The Nigger
Pixie,” 229; “Reparations,” 211, 212,
214; “Rick James,” 201, 227; Season 3,
228, 229, 231; “Tron,” 212–213;
“Tyrone the Crackhead,” 218, 219,
264n56
Charlie and Company (TV series), 49
Chez Whoopi (TV show, 1991), 143–145
Chitlin’ Circuit, 1, 17, 18, 36, 53, 69
Chris Rock: Big Ass Jokes (TV show,
1994), 78–80, 90, 96, 252n8, 256n26
Chris Rock: Bigger and Blacker (TV show,
1999), 81, 86, 88, 90, 263n32; gender
politics of, 82, 252n14
Chris Rock: Bring the Pain (TV show,
1996), 69, 80–82, 86, 88–90, 121, 191,
252; “Niggas vs. Black People,” 83, 84,
89, 97, 98, 252n13
Chris Rock: Never Scared (TV show,
2004), 88–96; gender politics of,
90–92; “rope-a-dope,” 90
Chris Rock Show,The (TV series), 84–86,
88, 254n40; “the Confederate flag,” 86;
“Pootie Tang,” 85; “Tupac Shakur
Boulevard,” 86
Clara’s Heart (Robert Mulligan, 1988),
140, 153
Color Purple,The (Steven Spielberg,
1985), 132, 140, 245, 258n8
comedies of color-coded color
blindness, 103–106, 119
Comic Relief (TV show), 133, 143–145
Coming to America (John Landis, 1988),
106, 107, 111, 255n14
Con Air (Simon West, 1997), 179, 183
Concert for Hurricane Relief, A (TV show,
2005), 238, 266n7
Corrina, Corrina (Jessie Nelson, 1994), 153
Cos (TV series), 27
Cosby, Bill, 17, 24–36, 50, 61, 63, 67, 68,
125, 202, 203, 239, 240, 247nn29, 32,
34, 248n46, 261n14; childhood
material, 26, 27; idealization and “the
American Dream,” 14, 30–36; and
“lower classes,” 36, 98, 202; and “the
people,” 239, 240; super “clean”
comedy of, 24; as television icon, 4,
15; tributes and awards, 63
Cosby (TV series), 27, 31–35, 63, 248n44
Cosby Show,The (TV series), 8, 27,
29–31, 33–35, 96, 118, 247nn32, 34,
247–248n38, 248n39; socio-cultural
significance of in 1980s, 62, 118
Cowboys and Colored People (sound
recording, 1967), 39
crossover, 2–6, 52, 62–64, 67, 68, 89, 98,
130, 183; black audiences to popular
cultural mainstream, 4, 6, 9, 10, 18, 19,
187; de facto, 10, 12, 179, 182, 183,
190, 205, 211; standup to television, 7,
10, 17, 27, 40, 41, 85, 86; television to
film, 10, 61–63, 67, 188
cultural comedies with creative control,
106–119
Daddy Day Care (Steve Carr, 2003), 105
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (Michel
Gondry, 2005), 181, 231, 233, 234,
261n10, 265nn91, 92, 93; Badu Erykah,
181, 234; Blackstar, 181, 234; Common,
181, 234;The Fugees, 181, 261;The
Roots, 181, 234; Jill Scott, 181, 234
Dead Prez, 180, 181, 209, 210, 265n93
De La Soul, 180
DMX, 191
Dr. Doolittle (Betty Thomas, 1998), 103,
104, 122
Dogma (Kevin Smith, 1999), 102
“Dolemite,” see Moore, Rudy Ray
Donna Reed Show,The (TV series), 30
Down to Earth (Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz,
2001), 88, 120–122, 125, 130, 204,
256n35
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Index
Eddie (Steve Rash, 1996), 132, 134
Eddie Murphy Delirious (Bruce Gowers,
1983), 70, 72, 90, 100
Eddie Murphy Raw (Robert Townsend,
1987), 71, 72, 90, 105, 107, 142, 191,
251–252n2, 255n16; borderline
misogyny in, 57, 72, 73, 254n5;
childhood material in, 70, 247n26;
construction of black masculinity in,
72; Cosby vs. Pryor in, 73, 98, 105;
gender politics in, 57, 72, 73;
homophobia in, 72; “It’s a dick thing,”
72; sexually explicit material in, 57,
72, 73; use of expletives in, 70, 73
Ed Sullivan Show,The (TV show), 21, 50
Electric Company,The (TV show), 27
Everybody Hates Chris (TV series), 95–97,
130, 254nn45, 46, 262n24; and
growing up in post-soul America, 96,
97; as The Wonder Years updated, 95
Eyes on the Prize II (TV miniseries,
1990), 61
Page 271
271
Fatherhood (Cosby), 31
first and second wave of post-soul
comics, 4, 5, 11, 125, 126, 130
fish-out-of-water comedies, 99–102,
106, 107, 119
Fish That Saved Pittsburgh,The (Gilbert
Moses, 1979), 61
Flip Wilson: Live at the Village Gate
(sound recording, 1964), 38–39
Flip Wilson Show,The (TV series), 16,
41–50, 52, 248, 250, 261
48 Hrs (Walter Hill, 1982), 70, 99, 100
For What It’s Worth (TV show, 2004),
182, 197–204; and Bill Cosby, 202,
203; critique of celebrity, 201, 202;
humor and anger in, 199–201
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum, A (stage musical), 157
Goldberg, Whoopi, 11–13, 132–177,
245n18, 258nn7, 13; black audience
reception of, 133, 134, 141, 168, 177;
and black women in the industry, 132,
134, 135, 146, 166, 260n50; “Bush”
joke, 169, 170; comedy of, 146, 153;
duality of persona, 135, 156, 157;
Friar’s Club roast, 166–168, 260n51;
gender and androgyny, 148, 153, 154;
industrial cachet of, 140; and Kerry
campaign, 169, 170; mainstream
audience reception of, 134, 141, 168,
177; and public controversy, 161–163,
166–169, 170; race and gender
identities, 135, 139, 142, 145, 156, 157;
and Slimfast, 133, 170; socio-cultural
significance of, 136, 142
Good Fences (TV show, 2003), 132, 170,
171
Good Times (TV series), 30, 59, 75, 87
Gregory, Dick, 3, 9, 15–25, 30, 33, 50, 51,
61, 88, 228, 229, 239, 246nn6, 18,
247n20; alliance with Congresswoman
Maxine Waters, 23; civil rights activism,
3, 15, 19, 21, 239, 246n18, 247n20; and
COINTELPRO, 23, 246n17; comic
persona and personal politics of, 9, 15,
18–22, 67, 82; and the Committee for
a Formal Apology, 22; and conspiracy
theories, 22, 23, 246; Dick Gregory
Health Enterprises, Inc. and the
Bahamian Diet, 22; “Friends of Dick
Gregory” tribute, 24; hunger strikes,
22; at Million Man March, 22; as “new
comic,” 3, 19–21; post–civil rights era
activism, 22, 23; presidential campaign
(1968), 21, 246n12; San Jose Mercury
exposes “Dark Alliance,” 23; standup
performances, 3, 17–19; views on 9/11,
23
Griffin, Eddie, 179, 184
Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990), 132, 143, 153,
154
Ghost Dad (Sidney Poitier, 1990), 63
Half Baked (Tamra Davis, 1998), 179,
184, 185, 190, 206; cult status, 184,
185; and slacker, stoner, Xer, 179, 184
272
10/24/2006
10:04 AM
Page 272
Index
Hampton, Chairman Fred Jr., 235, 236,
265n92
Harlem Nights (Eddie Murphy, 1989),
109–112, 116, 117
Harvey, Steve, 241; “For Us, By Us”
comedy, 242; “Willie Turner,” 241
Head of State (Chris Rock, 2003), 88,
120, 122–124, 204
Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Concert
(TV show, 2005), 239, 240; and Bill
Cosby, 239, 240; “the people,” 239, 240
Hot Chick,The (Tom Brady, 2002), 61
How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Kevin
Rodney Sullivan, 1998), 132
Hungry I, 3, 19
Hurricane Katrina, 237–240, 266; colorcoded reading of inequity, 237–239,
241, 266nn4, 7; New Orleans
Superdome, 238, 239, 266n4; role of
race, 237–239, 266nn4, 7
I Ain’t Dead Yet, Motherfucker (TV show,
2003), 59
I Am What I Ate . . . and I’m Frightened!!!
(Cosby), 35
I’m Gonna Get You Sucka! (Keenan Ivory
Wayans, 1988), 77
In Living Color (TV series), 8, 181,
207–211, 218, 220, 221, 227; “Anton,”
218, 219; articulation and performance
of race, 208, 211, 213, 214, 221; “The
Homeboys” (Keenan Ivory and
Damon Wayans), 213, 214, 227
Inside the Actor’s Studio (TV series), 231,
234, 235
intertextuality, 44
I-Spy (Betty Thomas, 2003), 105
I-Spy (TV series), 27, 63
Jack Paar Program,The (TV show), 18, 20,
25, 30, 41, 61
James, Rick, see Chapelle, Dave
Jeffersons,The (TV series), 7, 8, 30
Jo Jo Dancer,Your Life Is Calling (Richard
Pryor, 1986), 66, 251n112
Jumping Jack Flash (Penny Marshall,
1986) 140
Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for
Humor, 60, 169, 247n20, 250n98
Killin’Them Softly (TV show, 2000), 182,
191–198, 204, 263n35; articulation of
blackness, 192, 193, 195; on racial
difference/racial inequality, 191, 193,
195; speaking to and for GenX/Y,
192; “white people be like,” 194, 221
Kingdom Come (Doug McHenry, 2001),
132, 140
Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972),
51, 64
Lawrence, Martin, 38, 39, 45, 117
Lethal Weapon 4 (Richard Donner, 1998),
254n6
Let’s Do it Again (Sidney Poitier, 1975),
63, 125, 247n29
Leonard, Part 6 (Paul Weiland, 1987), 63,
251n107
Lil’ Jon, 91, 92, 210, 227
Lily (TV show, 1973), 52, 53
Longest Yard,The (Peter Segal, 2005), 125,
257n44
Long Walk Home,The (Richard Pearce,
1990), 153
Mabley, Moms, 11, 48, 132, 140, 146,
147–150, 152, 153, 259nn21, 23, 26,
27; and crossover and the revisionist
mammy, 11, 48, 147–150, 152, 153;
culturally specific comedy, 152; sexual
explicitness with sexual agency, 150, 159
Mack,The (Michael Campus, 1973), 63
Made in America (Richard Benjamin,
1993), 132, 163–166, 168
Malcolm X, 21, 80
Martin (TV series), 7, 45, 167, 187, 188
Million Worker March, 33, 246n18
Mo’ Funny: Black Comedy in America (TV
show, 1993), 55, 61
Moms (stage play), 140
10/24/2006
10:04 AM
Page 273
Index
Mooney, Paul, 66, 208, 220, 232
Moonlight and Valentino (David Anspaugh,
1995), 132
Moore, Rudy Ray (“Dolomite”), 187,
262n20
Mos Def, 181, 210, 216, 234, 235
Murphy, Charlie, 213, 230
Murphy, Eddie, 9–13, 69–77, 97, 99, 106,
107, 110, 130, 204, 251–252n2,
252nn3, 6, 253n31, 255n14; comedic
influences, 70, 72, 73, 110; as comedy’s
first “rock star,” 70, 75, 125, 191;
family friendliness of, 103–106; and
“fish-out-of-water” comedies, 99–101,
106, 107; gender politics of, 57, 72, 73,
111, 112, 117, 118, 120; and “good
Samaritan fallout,” 253n31; “I got
mine” ethos of, 74, 75; influence on
the next generation of comics, 126;
threatened “brown out” (1999), 87;
transformation of persona, 204,
255n11
New Bill Cosby Show,The (TV series), 27
New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles, 1991),
77
New York Three, 236, 265n93
Nigger (Gregory) 21
Nurse Betty (Neil LaBute, 2000),
254–255n9
“N”Word,The (Todd Williams, 2004), 61
Nutty Professor,The (Tom Shadyac, 1996),
61, 103, 105, 106, 119, 126, 179, 183,
255n18
Nutty Professor II:The Klumps, The (Peter
Segal, 2000) 103, 105, 106, 119
Okayplayer, 181, 235
One Foot in the Grave (TV series), 31
Oprah Winfrey Show,The (TV show), 229,
230, 232
Original Kings of Comedy,The (Spike Lee,
2000), 242, 267n15
Osmosis Jones (Bobby Farrelly, Peter
Farrelly, 2001), 254–255n9
273
Partridge Family,The (TV series), 51,
249n77
Panther (Mario Van Peebles, 1995), 61
PJs,The (TV series), 86–88, 95, 253n29
Playboy Club, 3, 18
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher (TV
show), 80
Pryor, Richard, 4, 9, 10, 17, 50–68, 82,
110, 191, 204, 250nn82, 91, 92, 97, 98,
251nn106, 112; autobiographical
comedy, 53–56; awards and tributes,
59, 60, 250n98; “Berkeley Years” 50, 51,
56; bifurcation of persona (stand-up vs.
film), 63–68; “crazy nigger,” 9, 10, 14,
17, 51, 59, 63; “doing Cosby,” 50; “Juke
and Opal,” 52, 53; “Junkie and Wino,”
53, 219, 250n82; killing the “Cosby” in
his act, 50; “Mudbone,” 53, 54; and
stand-up as theater, 17, 51; “Super
Nigger,” 51; as writer/director, 66
Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences
(Pryor), 54
Public Enemy, 180
Queens of Comedy,The (Steve Purcell,
2001), 242, 267n15
?uestlove Thompson, 181, 235
Richard Pryor: Here and Now (Richard
Pryor, 1983), 64, 65
Richard Pryor: Live and Smokin’ (Michael
Blum, 1971), 64
Richard Pryor: Live from the Sunset Strip
(Joe Layton, 1982), 54, 56, 64, 65, 191,
204
Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (Jeff
Margolies, 1979), 53, 54, 71, 135
Richard Pryor Show,The (TV series), 58,
59, 207, 208, 250n93; “The 40th
President,” 215, 216
Richard Pryor Special?,The (TV show,
1977), 58, 209, 219
Reno 911 (TV series), 61, 251n101
Robin Hood: Men in Tights (Mel Brooks,
1993), 179, 183, 190
10/24/2006
274
Page 274
Index
Rock, Chris, 10–13, 24, 69, 77–99, 101,
102, 108, 204, 232, 252nn13, 14,
253nn22, 37, 254nn40, 45; airing “dirty
laundry,” 79, 80, 93, 98, 252n14; and
controversy inside the black
community, 78–81, 83, 84; and
controversy over mainstream popularity,
84, 90, 127–130; hip-hop–informed
comedy, 84, 91–93, 98, 112–116, 254n42
Rock This! (Rock), 125
Room 222 (TV series), 28, 48
Russell Simmon’s Def Comedy Jam (TV
show), 84, 167, 186, 187, 220, 262n19
Saturday Night Live (TV show), 14, 15,
58, 69, 70, 74, 75, 77, 78, 107, 186,
219, 250n92; “the black guy
syndrome,” 70; “Buckwheat,” 70, 74;
“Prose and Cons,” 74–75; “White Like
Me,” 75–77
See No Evil, Hear No Evil (Arthur Hiller,
1989), 64, 110
Shrek (Andrew Adamson,Vicky Jenson,
2001), 105
Silver Streak (Arthur Hiller, 1976), 9, 58,
63, 64, 83
Sister Act (Emile Ardolino, 1992), 132,
154, 155
Skatetown, USA (William A. Lavey, 1979),
61
Some Kind of Hero (Michael Pressman,
1982), 64
Spook Show,The (stage play), 135, 136,
157, 176
Steve Allen Show,The (TV show), 20
Stir Crazy (Sidney Poitier, 1980), 64
Superman III (Richard Lester, 1983), 9,
65, 66, 251n110
“Super Negro,” 27, 29
Sweet Love, Bitter (Herbert Danska,
1967), 61
Sykes, Wanda, 85, 172–175, 204
This American Life (radio show), 266;
“After the Flood,” 237, 238, 266n4;
Denise Moore on, 238, 266n4
10:04 AM
Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,The
(TV show), 40, 41
Toy,The (Richard Donner, 1982), 65,
121, 204
Trading Places (John Landis, 1983), 70,
106, 125
200 Cigarettes (Risa Bramon Garcia,
1999), 179
Undercover Brother (Malcolm D. Lee,
2002), 179, 184, 185, 190
Uptown Comedy Express (TV show, 1987),
77, 112
Uptown Saturday Night (Sidney Poitier,
1974), 61–63, 247n29
Wanda at Large (TV series), 172–174, 204
Wanda Sykes:Tongue Untied (TV show,
2003), 173
Wattstax (Mel Stuart, 1973), 56, 181, 234,
265n91
West, Kanye, 181, 238–241, 266n7,
266–267n10; “George Bush doesn’t
care about black people,” 238, 239,
241, 266n7, 266–267n10
Whoopi (TV series), 171–174, 176
Whoopi Goldberg (stage play), 136–139
Whoopi Goldberg: Direct from Broadway
(TV show, 1985), 258n7
Whoopi Goldberg: Fontaine . . .Why Am I
Straight? (TV show, 1988), 140–142,
176
Wilson, Flip, 10, 17, 36–50, 61, 67, 68,
248n53, 249nn65, 69, 251n1; awards
and tributes, 37, 49; doing characters,
16, 38, 41, 43, 44–49, 249n65; Redd
Foxx’s endorsement, 36, 40; “Freddie
the Playboy,” 38; “Geraldine,” 16, 41,
44–49, 249n65; personal politics, 37,
39, 40, 49; “Reverend Leroy,” 16, 43,
44; “street humor” (old school), 37, 38,
41, 44, 48–50
Wonderfulness (sound recording, 1966), 14
You’ve Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998),
179, 183, 261n15
10/24/2006
10:04 AM
Page 275
About the Author
Bambi Haggins, the director of graduate studies and an assistant professor of
Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan, teaches about television history and representations of class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality across
media. Haggins has begun work on a second volume focusing on “for us, by us”
black comedy and the nature and significance of insider laughter.

Laughing Mad - Arizona State University

Transcription

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